When typhoon warnings went up last year, barrister Peter Lavac went to the beach, got out his surf-ski and paddled out into the waves.
The 55-year-old has been determined to keep up his training for the 2002 World Lifesaving Championships.
Wild weather will not sway him from his task as he draws inspiration from a friend who lost a battle against cancer.
Mr Lavac met Brian Horan in Sydney when he was five. They went to school and university together.
Horan was captain of the school and its football and cricket teams, Mr Lavac said. He became an anaesthetist and family man.
Mr Lavac dropped out of medical school and turned to law, working as a beach lifeguard in his spare time from the age of 17.
When he came to Hong Kong in 1986, he brought two surf-skis with him and became involved in a series of increasingly ambitious events to raise money for the Hong Kong Society for the Protection of Children.