County Recurrent: Saturday Along SMS: Sept. 5, 2015...

Sunday, September 6, 2015

Saturday Along SMS: Sept. 5, 2015...

Dateline: Santa Monica South, Labor Day Weekend 2015... Surf, Rip Currents, Crowds, Sketchy swimmers, A falling tide... What could happen?!...

We arrived two hours early to secure parking and to pound the hard pack gathering data and photos for our content starved readership...

Arrival at SMS at approx. 1000 hrs...

Parked behind Tower #22...

Upon arrival at SMS Tower #22...

OL Nestor watching the water and greeting tourists from Spain...

And no sooner did the Spaniards depart then a crew of tourists from Japan arrived to have their "Baywatch" moment captured on film, er, digital memory card... the steady stream of tourists wanting their photos taken on our iconic lifeguard towers is an interesting testament to the global influence and the universal popularity of the long since cancelled tv series, Baywatch, which continues to be shown worldwide in syndication since its inception, including in our local L.A. market on cable where it has recently been brought back...

Below, Veteran LACo OL, Drew Jones, manned up big time at SMS Tower #20. He was in for a very busy day of policing the surfing vs. swimming area (a thankless job), preventions, ordinance enforcements, supervising a LACo Cadet named Ryan (who did really well), and making a couple of rescues of swimmers over their heads (both in water depth and ability) and caught in rip currents.

"Chilling at the beach"... As I ran the soft sand on my pre-work workout I noticed these two locals in their beach chairs with their body boards, rash guards and fins, as well as the other patrons... along with the elevated surf in the background.

Perhaps the prettiest wave of the day presented itself around 1030 hrs between SMS #22 and #20...

I was lining up a shot of a surfer to get a sense of the size of the waves when this surfer bailed feet first and forward... check it out! Classic! Close up of same below...

OL Pedro Caldas, watching the water, at approx. 1030 hrs...

*** Video Alert ! ***

It was now time to field test our GoPro camera in the surf...

• Surface 360 Degrees: The Video

• Surfer: The Video

• Floating: The Video

• Kicking Toward Shore With Fins.. : The Video

And immediately below are four (4) still photos we shot at surface level with the GoPro...

"Floating In A Rip Current..."

View Toward Shore...

View to sea...

View of Two Surfers...

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Back on terra firma with our Nikon Coolpix all weather digital camera, we captured two more videos before starting our shift at 1200 hrs...

• Baywatch Malibu: Returning to the 'bu...

• Prevent At SMS Tower #24: The Video

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