Photo of the Day — Drawn Up

© 2012 Mark Meredith

I’ve taken to having a brisk half-hour walk everyday. My favoured location for that is the wide, flat expanse of nearby Long Bay Regional Park beach. It takes that long to walk two lengths. We’re really lucky to have such a lovely beach so close. It’s a wonderful place for exercise and one that I’ve photographed countless times. This photo was taken the other day. I borrowed my wife’s Fuji X10 compact for my walk — just in case I saw something worthwhile— as I didn’t feel like lugging my SLR along. These boats were drawn up waiting for a party of school children from the Sir Peter Blake Marine Education & Recreation Centre, based at the end of the beach. Sir Peter Blake was a New Zealand hero, winning the Whitbread Round the World race and leading New Zealand to successive Americas Cup victories. Tragically, he was murdered by pirates who boarded his boat at the mouth of the Amazon River in 2001 while he and his crew were doing environmental research. The Centre which carries his name at Long Bay teaches Kiwis of all ages about sea-based activiltes and I often see people splashing about in kayaks, learning to surf or sail. Education about the sea is terribly important in New Zealand as we have the worst drowning rate in the developed world: an average of 105 per year, 55 this year to date, from a population of just 4 million.