Welcome...
to Opotiki Surf Life Saving Club
The Opotiki Surf Life Saving Club provides a crucial service to people who are out on our beaches and in the sea. Our most important aim is to keep beachgoers as safe as possible during patrol hours. We patrol the beach, train lifeguards, and teach and guide our Junior Surf members, who are our lifeguards of the future.
Our volunteer lifeguards patrol at Waiotahe Beach on Sundays from late November to February.
We run a very successful Junior program for 4-13 year olds which commences in November as well as training our future lifeguards.
We are very much a family-oriented club and welcome all ages and abilities to become involved.
Brief History
The first New Zealand Surf Lifesaving Clubs were formed in 1910 and it was 20 years later, that an awareness of the need for patrolled beaches grew in the BOP. Around this time there were clubs formed at Waihi, Mt Maunganui, Papamoa, Te Puke, Thornton, Whakatane and our club, Opotiki, in 1933.
With the Second World War breaking out, the club went into recess in 1940. Several short-lived attempts to re-establish the club over the next 25 years were not successful but in 1976 a small group of families led by Hugh Cooper put the patrol flags out again. They led a community fundraising drive to build a clubhouse and local tradies got behind it as well. This was a turning point for the club when it was opened in 1980 and has secured the club’s future and Waiotahi Beach as the district’s site for patrolled surf swimming.
