More rescue tubes for Port Fairy's nippers program

The club's program, which attracts about 450 participants each summer, starts on December 12.

Preliminary skills evaluation sessions are on this weekend at East Beach.

Community Bank Port Fairy and District has just donated 20 rescue tubes to the club which are crucial to the program.

Nippers coordinator Nicole Dwyer said the group was grateful for the donation which is equivalent to about $2500.

She explained the program required one water safety device per every five kids.

"So when they're in the water, if you're standing there with a tube and a child gets into trouble, you throw the tube out and it's an instant device that can rescue them," she said.

"You can wrap it around the body, that's what it's used for in a serious rescue.

"It's going to make everyone, especially parents, feel a lot of more at ease knowing there's more devices that can take care of their kids."

Dwyer said water safety was going to be as important as ever this summer.

"I guess on the back of two years of COVID, families are worried about how their kids are going to cope with the lack of swimming lessons over the past couple of years," she said.

Port Fairy and District branch manger Hollie Ciurleo said the bank was delighted to support the program.

"It's very exciting for us to be able to support the local community," she said.

"It's great to see how much fun the kids have out there and to know that while they're doing it they're going to be safe - that's a really important thing for us as well."

Port Fairy's program, which consists of 13 sessions, is for under 6 to under 14.

Dwyer said the program would follow the same session format as last summer.

"COVID restrictions made us split the age groups, we used to run all the age groups at once on the beach so last year we were forced due to density limits to split our groups," she said.

"So we have under 6/7/8/9 in the first session and then under 10/11/12/13/14, in the second session.

"We didn't have to do that again this year but we've kept that in place because we feel we're building up a new group of volunteers because the big kids can help with the little kids which will teach them leadership skills."

Dwyer added the two separate session times also helped parents see all of their kids in action.

The younger group will start at 9.30am and go through until 10.30am while the older group is 11am-12pm.

The club's popular nippers program relies on volunteers and Dwyer hopes they'll be back this summer.

The pandemic has made it difficult for many clubs to draw volunteers.

"We do rely on a lot of volunteers which will be interesting to see on the back of COVID what happens with our volunteer-base but a surf club's a place where everyone's more than happy to put their hand up and help out which is great because we wouldn't survive without volunteers," she said.

Patrol started last weekend and runs through until after Easter 2022. Rescue tubes are also an important part of patrol.

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