As T&T read­ied it­self to head to the poll to­day with the Gen­er­al Elec­tion ex­tend­ing the school va­ca­tion by one day, sev­er­al fam­i­lies opt­ed to take ad­van­tage of the chance to take a last dip in the salt yes­ter­day.

While Mara­cas Beach was scat­tered with old and young soak­ing up the sun, sand and sea; watch­ful life­guards kept up a steady pa­trol as they sought to en­sure it was an in­ci­dent-free day.

Keep­ing a watch­ful eye on the chil­dren play­ing foot­ball and build­ing sand­cas­tles as the adults swam out past the break­ers, life­guard Lu­cin­da Guer­ra con­firmed yes­ter­day’s crowd was “more man­age­able” com­pared to the bumper num­bers they had seen over the East­er week­end.

Guer­ra was part of the batch of new life­guards re­cent­ly re­cruit­ed by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and as­signed to man beach­es along the north­east coast.

In­di­cat­ing the sea had been a lot tougher over the four-day long hol­i­day week­end, she said, “The sea is much calmer now.”

De­scrib­ing yes­ter­day’s crowd around 11.30 am as “medi­um”, she said the day was still young and de­clined to spec­u­late as to the num­bers swelling.

In­stead, Guer­ra said, “Every Sun­day, there are a lot of peo­ple on the beach.”