quote:

Originally posted by gearhounds:
Swim parallel to shore on your back doing a breast stroke style kick and sweeping your arms in time with your legs until you are out of the rip. Unless you have extremely low body fat, salt water will buoy you extremely well and conserve energy.

Rip currents don’t keep pulling you out to sea indefinitely, and they are not a super wide, non-stop phenomenon. The people that drown in them most often panic and exhaust themselves trying to power their way straight in to shore. You can float for a very long time in salt water without expending a lot of effort. Panic with adrenaline (and possibly poor swimming skills) are what get people killed.

A few years ago I was at OCMD with family and saw what I recognized as deflated Mylar balloons a good ways off shore. I’m a good swimmer and I was bored, so I went out to get them. I did a slow, easy breast stroke the whole way out, and when I got to them realized it was a longer swim than it appeared from shore. The beach disappeared between swells and I couldn’t hear the breakers at all. It was uncannily quiet but peaceful. I set back out in a relaxed back crawl dragging the balloons with me and after a few minutes heard one of the lifeguards asking me if I was ok. He had deployed with his swim buoy to “get me”. I told him I was fine and didn’t bother to break my pace as I passed him. Of course, since I was about 55 and he in his 20’s, he looked flustered and asked me not to do it again . When I got to shore, I asked a different guard how far out I was and he estimated about 200+ yards. My wife tried to take a pic with her phone and I was just a dot among the swells. I ended up about 100 yards south of our umbrella when I get back to shore. I never felt fatigued, never felt any fear or trepidation, and went right back to playing in the surf. Granted, this is not a rip current story, but the same applies. Don’t panic, and don’t exhaust yourself trying to power your way back to shore.

As an aside, I often take my kids (15, 20) out about 50-75 yards and float a while, then slow swim back to shore so they understand that just because you can’t touch the bottom, it’s nothing to be afraid of. We are all fairly lean and have no trouble floating without any effort whatsoever.