Ocean fun on a small scale

In the final of a four-part series, CATHERINE MASTERS looks at the growing popularity of body boarding, surfing's primary school.

When body boarders get talking they enter another world.

Their faces are transformed, they become animated and their eyes light up, but you can tell they are far, far away riding that big wave in their mind.

Then they start gesturing and babbling.

"It's just so exhilarating ... I can't describe it ... You want to keep doing it again and again until you're stuffed ... I can't explain that feeling, of being on the board, and the waves, and going Aaaaarrrrggggghhhhh," said one.

But surfers have other words for the minnows of the shallows.

These kings of the sea, standing on full-sized boards, look down on the smaller, often younger, folk lying flat on their tummies on their "chilli bin lids" with annoyance because they get underfoot.

Which is why body boarders are also known in surfing circles as "speed bumps".

But the surfers had better wise up because body boarding is one of New Zealand's fastest growing sports.

The boards are one of the biggest-selling pieces of outdoor equipment, and it is hard to imagine going to the beach without one.

Surfing New Zealand figures show 39,000 body boards were sold last summer from surf shops alone.

The Warehouse has sold 20,000 since July and that is 20 per cent up on last year, says sports buyer Steve Clark.

"Which is surprising I have to say because we would have expected with the weather the way it's been that sales of body boards would have been down.

"But sales have been exceptionally good this year."

Surfer Carl Chase, manager of surf shop Fresh Squeezed Surf Boards at Piha on Auckland's stormy West Coast, has a word of caution for those heading to surf beaches to body board this summer.

Do not think they are safe for children to play on just because they are smaller than long boards, he says.

He has often seen people get into trouble in the water on body boards and has pulled a few out.

"They're just inexperienced, anyone can go and buy one, and they're just out there flapping around on it - no flippers, they don't know anything about the ocean.

"The kids have got to know about the surf and most of them don't. No, they're not safe."

He also asks surfers to be tolerant of them, but says collisions will happen.

"They're lying down, you can't see them, they come shooting out of the white water, out of control, it's unavoidable sometimes.

"They can be very annoying. There's a bit of animosity towards body boarders, but you've got to realise a lot of them are just kids learning - they're going to end up surfing one day."

Mick Kearney, education officer with Surf Life Saving Northern Region, says parents should make sure that if they buy a body board it has an attached safety leash, which goes around the wrist.

"That's really important, because if they're a little kid and they fall off and they're not a good swimmer at least they're tied to something that floats and they can pull themselves back up on to it."

Body boarders should also wear flippers, which help with safety. In fact, Kearney says, do not buy a body board without also buying flippers.

Children should always be watched by an adult, they should listen to lifeguards, they must never body board alone and should do it only between the flags.

Body boarding has been around for several decades, but surfing has been popular in the Pacific for hundreds of years. An entry in Captain Cook's journal, made by a lieutenant soon after Cook was killed in Hawaii, says that whenever there was stormy weather or big swells, 20 or 30 of the "natives, taking each a long narrow board, rounded at the ends, set out together from the shore ... Their first object is to place themselves on the summit of the largest surge, by which they are driven along with amazing rapidity toward the shore ... The boldness ... is astonishing and scarcely to be credited."