The Harbour surfing ban

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hang11
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue May 15, 2012 10:30 am

Re: The Harbour surfing ban

Postby hang11 » Sat Jul 14, 2012 11:46 am

Tried knee paddling a longboard and pretending to be a midget?

windybeach
Posts: 20
Joined: Tue May 22, 2012 8:22 pm
Location: Brighton
Contact:

Re: The Harbour surfing ban

Postby windybeach » Mon Jul 16, 2012 11:08 am

I am going to plot up down at soldiers later with an inflatable dinghy, I will charge a pound a time to paddle surfers across and back.

danielsatch
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu May 24, 2012 8:57 am

Re: The Harbour surfing ban

Postby danielsatch » Mon Jul 16, 2012 9:43 pm

The incident involved 3 surfers crossing the harbour from the harbour beach towards Soldiers. What was strange, was that the incident was around 1 hour before high tide.

My guess is that the 3 surfers were surfing New Beach and had parked off at Soldiers and were paddling back to the car.

The 3 surfers in question ignored or did not understand the amber light near the lifeboat station which was illuminated. This informs incoming sea vessels that a boat is on its way out. (I did not know this myself if I am honest) The trouble is instead of waiting for the large vessel to pass by (WHICH THEY DID SEE) the surfers carried on paddling out across infront of it. This was extremly dangerous as a vessel that large can not just apply the brakes. As a consequence the vessel veered horribly close to soldiers and could have hit the wall.

The harbour master in my opinion is not to blame here for implimenting the ban to cross. If the ship would have hit the wall it would have been disastrous and we would have been looking at a complete ban. The fact he has still allowed us to surf here is a credit to him. I have learnt that he wishes to even educate those to the harbour rules, such as the crossing light and even to relax the ban if people are willing to learn the rules.

As there is no singular organisation of surfers he was unable to convey his concerns etc. The aim is to get him to speak out at a Tribal Wave movie night and relay his concerns and the rules to follow.

After all we are surfing a busy port and common sense needs to be applied, but it seems a few indivuals have ignored this.

webbyji
Posts: 22
Joined: Mon Jun 25, 2012 8:38 pm

Re: The Harbour surfing ban

Postby webbyji » Mon Jul 16, 2012 11:10 pm

thanks for the info Daniel, I was wondering what had really happened. Yes the harbour master is within his rights to ban crossing the harbour, but it would be good to have a conversation with him so that we can get things clear maybe. If we all knew about the warning lights etc. (I didn't know that before you told me), and he knew that its very unlikely for people to be surfing in the harbour around high tide, or we could work out a way that the harbour ban only works when big ships are going to be moving then we might be able to sort it out. The ship movements are even online: http://www.shoreham-port.co.uk/vessel-movements
Let us know about the movie night
Cheers
Martin

danielsatch
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu May 24, 2012 8:57 am

Re: The Harbour surfing ban

Postby danielsatch » Tue Jul 17, 2012 10:19 pm

Will do. Hopefully we will have a movie night soon and get the Harbour master in to have a chat to all of us and clear all the rules etc up. Keep checking Sharkbait for the next movie night.
:geek:


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