Grieving family call for lifesavers on beach

Beau Zimmer, 22, James Plooy, 20, and Aaron Sherman, 21, are among residents who want to see lifesavers at Baylys Beach. Picture / Richard Robinson

A Paparoa family whose father drowned in rugged surf at Baylys Beach, near Dargaville, on Waitangi Day are struggling to understand why the increasingly popular holiday spot has no surf-lifesaving facilities.

"There should be lifeguards - it's a very dangerous beach," daughter Karen Stewart, 21, told the Herald yesterday. "There should have been people out there to help my dad."

Alexander Stewart, 46, drowned after becoming trapped in a rip and swept out to sea about 2pm on Monday.

He was the second person to die at the beach in a week. A fisherman drowned on January 29.

Mr Stewart's widow, Elena, said his stepdaughter Dasha, 13, and daughter Michelle, 14, could see their father was in trouble but their cries for help went unheeded. He also has a 1-year-old daughter, Elizabeth.

Those who did hear the children were not lifeguards, and appeared "scared" of the water, she said.

"There were plenty of people there [on Monday], and kids were in the water, but they couldn't ask somebody for help," Mrs Stewart said.

"We cried 'Help him, help him', but people didn't know who needed help."

In the end, Mrs Stewart was forced to try to rescue her husband alone, "but the waves were so big I couldn't see anything".

Mr Stewart, a dairy farmer at Paparoa, about 45km south of Dargaville, was a confident, strong swimmer, said Mrs Stewart, a Russian immigrant.

Karen Stewart is struggling to come to terms with that. "He taught us about rips, so that's why I can't understand why it happened."

Funeral arrangements have yet to be made, and Mr Stewart's 20-year-old stepson Ilya will likely curtail his mechanical engineering studies at the University of Canterbury to tend the family farm.

But the family hope Mr Stewart's death will bring about two changes: the installation of a permanent lifesaving facility at the beach, and increased vigilance by swimmers.

And Baylys Beach residents were yesterday vowing to take matters in to their own hands, and put up their own signs warning visitors of the beach's dangers.

The Baylys Beach Society plans to meet tonight to discuss the latest fatality, secretary Beth Kelliher said yesterday.

"Heaps of people want to get involved. People are being dragged out and having to be rescued.

"We just want to put a big sign up saying it's dangerous. Locals are very upset. We just want something to happen."

Mrs Kelliher said visitors to the beach had no idea of the dangers that lurked "just below the surface", and were lulled into a false sense of security by the ocean's calm surface.

"You can be in ankle-deep water and a big sweep can knock you off your feet."

Residents did not want out-of-towners to stop going to Baylys, Mrs Kelliher said. "We just want them to be aware."

A band of local surfers is also keen to see the beach made safer and is looking to establish a lifesaving group.

Aaron Sherman, 21, a regular surfer at the beach, said he had had two dislocated shoulders in the surf, with waves often capable of breaking leg ropes - and legs.

Commercial fisherman and surfer Dylan Chamberlain, 25, said friends of his were regularly having to reach out and grab swimmers who were "getting washed past".

Mr Chamberlain said he had been a swimmer "forever", but would never go out past waist-deep when swimming at Baylys.

"People just don't understand," he said. "They say, 'It's a calm bit of water', but it's only calm because it is a hole."

He said the group would go to the media to raise awareness of the dangerous nature of the beach, in the hope of raising funds for an inflatable rescue boat.

The surfers would not patrol the beach fulltime, he said, "but if someone gets in to trouble, we can save them".

Kaipara District Council chief executive Jack McKerchar said yesterday the council would look at providing an inflatable rescue boat, to be permanently housed at the Te Kopuru fire station, about five minutes by road from the beach at Glinks Gully.

Glinks Gully is about 15 minutes south of Baylys Beach by boat.

The project is expected to cost about $20,000.

Mr McKerchar said the council had not been formally approached by anyone with concerns about safety at the beach, but the matter would be "on the agenda" at its next meeting.

"The council knows the community needs to, and wants to, do something about it."