Pool: Ocean Spa – Napier’s Marine Parade
Grade: A-
The Good: The management, the water, the facilities, the view and the coffee.
The Ugly: The pice and no lane ropes in the lap pool.
Reflections: It’s about time Napier had a decent swimming pool – and now it’s got one. The new Ocean Spa located on the Marine Parade opened on February 1 2003 and it’s terrific. The complex has six or seven spa type pools and a 25m lap pool. It’s nice, its new and it has a view to die for. It includes great changing rooms, a soon to be opened and very well equipped gym and a real coffee shop with real black coffee, nice muffins, real cream, proper knives and forks – brilliantly civilized. Napier City Council have handed it over to H2O Management to operate which is the smartest thing they’ve done in a while. Thank God they never gave it to the Onekawa lot to run. Ocean Spa – if you are visiting Napier go there for a swim. If you live in Napier get out of that Onekawa place and go somewhere where the atmosphere is good for you. Probably the only small complaint is the prices - $6 for adults and $4 up to 14. An adult 30 concession though is down to $130. Besides you get what you pay for, we guess. Oh, and we think they need some chairs down by the lap pool and lane ropes in the lap pool. But we imagine they are still to come.

Pool: Napier - Onekawa Pool
www.onekawaaquatic.co.nz
Grade: E
The Good: Clive Pool - Hastings is only 10kms away
The Ugly: How long have you got.
Reflections: Just about every thing you can do badly in a pool has been done at Onekawa in Napier. Every thing has been done on the cheap and it shows. It is the ultimate swimming pool junk shop. A pool here, a pool there, none of it coordinated, none of it works. The outdoor pool is 55 yards, cold, never has decent lane ropes and is badly supervised by staff who can't wait for knock-off time. It has two beaches on either side and is shallow with no starting blocks or backstroke flags. The "old" indoor pool is too narrow, only has rope lane dividers, is too shallow and whenever you want to have a swim is completely taken over by the local swimming club - although God knows why, its over ten years since one of their members won a decent swimming race. When you do get a swim, the water is so rough your stroke falls to bits. The "new" indoor pool is also too narrow at six lanes. The scum line around the edge is a disgrace. Tiles are falling off the floor. The speed signs are seldom in place and when they are the staff do not police them. "Players" swim unchecked across the lap lanes and the chlorine level combined with poor ventilation may be a factor in the headaches and skin problems experienced by some of those who swim there most. As we said, "It's only 10kms - Drive To Clive."

POST SCRIPT: Much of the world's comedy is a parody of serious events. Mash is a parody on the Korean War, Alf Garnett is a parody on life in East London, Faulty Towers is a parody on running an English seaside hotel and Onekawa is a parody on running a swimming pool.

Imagine what a good scriptwriter could make of the following:

1. Every afternoon a whole 25m pool is allocated to one small provincial swimming club. The rest of the town's lap swimmers are squashed into just two lanes in another pool. A third lane used to be available but its floor tiles are falling off so badly it's been closed with road cones.

2. All the town's play swimmers also use the pool with the two lap lanes and the road cones making conditions for lap swimmers uncomfortable, discriminatory and dangerous.

3. When conditions get too impossible for the lap swimmers a third lap lane is put in which means the pools aquatic sevens players are now squashed into just two lanes.

4. Every pool in New Zealand provides a lap clock. No they do not. Not at Onekawa. The pool controlled by the provincial swimming club, they have one but the rest of Napier must do without.

5. Pool staff are under a specific instruction that there are named customers they are forbidden to talk to. Customers know they have been placed on the "forbidden" list when the staff's friendly greeting becomes the hip level wrist flick.

6. Onekawa is the "poo" capital of New Zealand. The pool spends more time closed for water cleaning than any other pool we've visited. We notice that in the Napier City Council's rates breakdown the Onekawa Pool and the Advanced Sewage Treatment Levy are along side each other. We are not suprised.

Pool: Wairoa - Wairoa Pool
Grade: A
The Good: The whole set up has been well done and it looks like it is being well managed
The Ugly: Nothing we could see
Reflections: This is an easy pool to write about. It is brilliant. It is new, well looked after, good lane ropes, has a great membership system, is a good depth, good natural light, good ventilation, weight training facilities just down the corridor and all in a town the size of Wairoa. Who ever got this place underway did a brilliant job. It gets an "A" just for being there. It would be a great place to have a training camp. We just hope the tuition available matches the facility. If it does there is no reason why Wairoa swimmers can't take the Napier and Gisborne "city" kids to the cleaners. Well done Wairoa.

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