Petrel Cove

Today was another huge day, culminating with our visit to Petrel Cove.

Petrel Cove near Victor Harbor in Encounter Bay, Fleurieu Peninsula, is a popular surfing beach. It is also rated as highly hazardous!

Petrel Cove is a 200 m long south facing beach, which is bordered and backed by the 50 m high steep bluffs of Rosetta Head. The steeply dipping metasedimentary rocks also form prominent jagged rock platforms to either side and along the eastern half of the beach. There is just a 50 m pocket of open sand and a bar, which is also the location of a permanent rip.

For those of you who do not know what a rip is, it is an unresistable current. The narrow cove is pounded by large swells and when the water retreats, strong rip currents pull in several directions leaving swimmers with little chance of keeping their footing.

The signs say no swimming, there is no cellphone signal and worse, no way of knowing the dangers that lie beneath the water's surface at Petrel Cove.

The beach is fast earning the reputation as the state's deadliest stretch of coastline and only recently it claimed another life when a man was caught in a rip and taken out to sea towards Kings Head.

He was the fourth person in a month to be caught in the water at Petrel Cove. The beach area is scattered with no swimming and dangerous-rip warning signs and memorials for those who have died there.

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