Original Watermen Blog

  How Baywatch Made Lifeguard Gear Sexy Before Baywatch brought red swimsuits and rescue cans into living rooms around the world, lifeguarding was already a serious profession with decades of development buoying the industry. The gear was functional, the training rigorous, and the risks very real. But the public didn’t always see that. Then came […]

Lifeguard WWII Stories: Jack Hamlin and the Spirit of Service at Normandy “Be nothing, but just be a lifeguard. We were not there to destroy anybody, to kill anybody. We were there just to do rescue operations…” —Jack Hamlin, WWII Lifeguard and U.S. Coast Guard rescue swimmer during D‑Day United Service Organizations That’s what Jack […]

Lifeguard Myths Debunked: Do They Really Carry Shark Repellent? For a job as serious as lifeguarding, there sure are a lot of wild stories floating around. Maybe it’s the Hollywood dramatization. Maybe it’s the mystique of the red suit. Either way, it’s time to set the record straight. From shark repellent to slow-motion runs, we’re […]

The Lifeguard Who Invented the Rescue Can Before the red rescue buoy became an international icon symbolizing beach heroism, before the rescue can was a must-have staple in lifeguarding, before the hottest actors in film and television slung the cans across their bodies and jogged slow-mo down the beach, one man found himself fed up […]

Why DaFiN Are the Best Swim Fins The best swim fins didn’t appear out of a marketing brainstorm. They grew from real lifeguard demands. Australian surfer and former Bondi Beach guard Andy Cochran carved the first DaFiN prototypes from a block of wood in the mid-1990s, then refined them in Hawaiʻi alongside legendary watermen Mark […]

The History of Surf Rescue Fins (And The Brand Above the Rest) Ask any lifeguard what piece of gear they can’t live without, and most will give you the same answer: fins. They’re not a luxury, not an accessory, rather an extension of their own flesh and blood. But surf rescue fins haven’t always looked […]