It is hard for me to describe just how fabulous the East London Surf Lifesaving Club is. I run out of superlatives.
The club was there on Nahoon Beach before I started surfing and I started a long time ago.
What a fantastic institution it is and who can even vaguely guess how many lives have been saved due to this club?
How many guards have been trained here that now look after our beaches from Port Alfred to Port St Johns and beyond?
How many youngsters now have a solid appreciation for the ocean, team sport, winning and losing, health, vitality, opportunity and life.
I cannot say enough about the Princes, Woods, Fenns, Smiths, Tebbutts, Gallows, Rooses, Breetzkes, Malherbes and on and on.
My apologies — I have left out far too many names. It is all about family and, wow, what a legacy, what a history.
The ELSLC members have just returned from the DHL SA Masters Lifesaving Championships in Gqeberha. Approximately 300 athletes competed from 18 clubs across the length and breadth of our land.
Our home team came a credible fifth behind Fish Hoek first, Summerstrand second, Umhlanga Rocks third and Clifton fourth.
The big cherry on the top, though, was our own Joshua Fenn, the victor ludorum of the whole show. What a colossal achievement.
This writer spent some time with team captain for this ELSC SA Masters outing, Peter Fielding (age 75), showing that there is no expiry date on how much fun you are allowed to have down at the beach.
Pete competed in malibu, surf ski, swim and long run. He tells me that he became a lifesaver semi by accident.
He wanted to surf ski paddle with his late brother around Cape Point and in those days you were not allowed to enter if you did not have an SPA (surf proficiency award), so Pete joined a club and got started.
Pete has been in love with the sea since about 1970.
When he started surfing in Cape Town, there were no wetsuits, no board leashes and between him and his five buddies, they had three boards to share in total.
Freezing, broke and keen as mustard, the bug bit and never let go.
Pete ended up studying a BA at UCT, majoring in English and philosophy. He says he was a bad student and surfed too much because he took four years to get a three-year degree.
He seemed to get over the bad bit because he then secured a BSC in zoology and chemistry. Then followed some traveling, surfing and earning money catching fish on fishing boats.
He earned enough to work six months and travel six months, and save enough to study honours, master’s and a Phd!
All along Pete never lost his love for the ocean.
Pete has travelled the world over and can recount stories from all corners of the globe, in the water, under the water and next to the water.
By the time Pete got to his honours year on account of his travelling and working, he was about seven years older than his then-girlfriend, Bridgit who was in the honours class with him.
Ever the adventurer, Pete had a kombi at the time and took the entire honours class on an extended trip to the former Transkei, so much so that they all missed their graduation.
Pete has travelled the world over and can recount stories from all corners of the globe, in the water, under the water and next to the water.
Much like this writer, any time outside of the front door of the home is a good time.
I asked deputy headmaster Bridgit how she managed all Pete’s energy.
“Oh, he makes life interesting,” she said. “He is never boring.”
Pete loves his ELSLC family and is greatly pleased with the nippers, who are out and about, and away from cell phones, Xbox, computer games and the like.
Club leadership like Travis Smith, Keith and Sharon Jones and so many others in the club have his respect.
There are too many medals from this most recent SA Masters lifesaving championships to list them all, but local surfer Andre van Wyk deserves a nod, coming home with two gold medals in double ski (with Hennie Roos) and taplin, two silver medals in iron man and surfski, and one bronze medal in surf swim.
The World Masters Lifesaving Championships take place in Gqeberha in November this year.
No doubt our home club will come home with some international gold.
ELSLC is a feather in our cap.
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