A Taste of Summer

by Kailey Aiken

With public schools off and the sun out this past Thursday, we had our first real taste of what summer usually looks like on Beach 97th Street. People were set up on the beach long before 10 a.m. and the sand filled up with beach towels, chairs, umbrellas, and tents by noon, complete with nutcracker men making their way through the crowds.

For the first time this summer, it was necessary to have ropes and poles set up for most of our chairs, to make sure lifeguards had at least a tiny patch of sand to themselves.

We had a few missing kids (at times, two at once), but all of them were returned safely to their parents within thirty minutes. There was one small case (rescue) caused by the rip current on Beach 97th Street. We scooped up three young boys struggling to swim in against the rip and followed them up to their moms to get their information for our records.

When we got up there, one of the moms was surprised. “They were really drowning? We thought they were just pranking us!” she said. The kids were also rescued two blocks over from where their moms were sitting, facing away from the water.

After Thursday, the oh-so-familiar clouds and rain returned to Rockaway, lasting from Friday until Tuesday, with the sun sneaking in for a few hours some days. Public elementary schools had off on Friday, so we got a little bit of a crowd, but nothing compared to Thursday.

Saturday morning was foggy and rainy, yet still on the warmer side, and the waves were great for surfing. Surfline predicted fair to good conditions, so the ocean was crammed with surfers all day long.

Around noon, a surfer on the uptown side of the Beach 98th Street jetty got caught on the rocks and climbed up with his board, getting cut up pretty badly in the process. Once he came into view, lifeguards reacted quickly and met him out on the rocks where he refused help. He said he had his own first aid kit, and even when EMS told him he would probably need stitches, he declined care.

Around 4 p.m., the clouds parted for almost two hours, making for a gorgeous evening on the beach. Even at full high tide, the waves held up, and surfers enjoyed a few warm hours in the water.

As we sit in the rain for the fourth day in a row, I’m hoping the sunny forecast for Wednesday doesn’t change. But there is still something nice about a slow rainy day — they become few and far between come July.