A 73-year-old local lifeguard says “it was just another day at the office” when he saved two lives at Mount Main Beach over the weekend.

Kent Jarman says he has a bit of a reputation with his coworkers that things seem to happen where he’s there.

“I don’t think it follows me, but I seem to have a nose for when things aren’t going to be right.

“You have a bit of an instinct about the days when it’s going to be tricky.

“If you’ve done your homework you can see where your potential trouble spots are and you have a bit of a feel for where issues are going to be.”

Describing the weekend, Kent says it was pretty busy.

He says there were “good numbers on the beach”.

“We did one rescue on Saturday, a young girl on a boogie board, and probably about 400m off the beach.

“I think the rip started it and then the wind.

“We picked her up with a jet ski. She was pretty pleased to see me. She was probably 13 or 14 maybe.”

Kent says on Sunday, lots of people were on the beach and then there was one rescue almost on closing time.

He says they were finishing up at 5pm when a young Korean boy on a hire board, with no knowledge of how to paddle it, needed a bit of help back to the beach.

“He kept thanking me all the way and I had to help him paddle his surfboard back in because he wasn’t very competent.

“I grabbed hold of the front of his board and paddled with one arm and got him to do a bit of paddling.

“The conditions weren’t too bad, so it was just for me to assist back to the beach.

“I suggested that perhaps he doesn’t go out too far again.”

Kent says it was good to see him back and safe.

Kent Jarman says he's lost count of how many people he has saved over his career. Photo supplied. 

“We like to do a lot of what I call ‘preventative guarding’. We don’t want to be the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.

“If you can eliminate a lot of the potential risk, then it makes the beach more manageable because we're looking at good three or four kilometres of coastline.

“We will move people away from the areas that are deemed to be dangerous and then also give them an alternative area to swim.

“We did quite a lot of that on Sunday.”

Kent says they probably moved about 35 to 40 people.

“Give them a wave and in some cases call them and say ‘Look we’re not chasing you out of the water but you realise where you are is potentially a little dangerous.

“Then we help them to understand what the water is doing and how to read a rip.

“It’s about educating people as much as anything else.”

Kent says the weather and sea conditions were pretty good on the weekend.

“It’s those conditions you weren’t expecting to do rescues because it was pretty benign, but hey, it happens at any time.

“We had a very big tide on the weekend.

“We had an outgoing tide all afternoon which tends to make the rips work a bit harder.

“We’ve got a big rip down close to the surf club at the main beach but the rest of the beach isn’t too bad.

“The safest place to swim on the main beach is down towards Moturiki or in Shark Alley.

“We have a very active rip at Sutherland Avenue and another one towards Bay Street, which people need to be aware of.”