Related: Family beach outing turns deadly for teen; unpredictable surf kills five in county
By John Pacenti
Author John Irving called it the “Under Toad” in his classic novel, The World According to Garp, a monster who dwells under the surface to grab unsuspecting children swimming in the ocean and pull them to its Neptunian netherworld.
Call it the undertow, a rip current or a rip tide — all different depending on the water’s dynamic — the ocean’s grip can be terrifying.
Being caught in a rip current in South Florida is to know pure helplessness. I know because nearly 20 years ago, I experienced that desperation. There’s a fish out of water and there is the opposite — we humans flailing in the water against a force so much larger than us.
It happened when I joined my wife, my in-laws, and my daughters at Boca Raton’s Red Reef Park, which is known for its rocky outcropping that depending on the tide and ocean conditions can be teeming with fish.
I was snorkeling around the rocks and then ventured about 30 yards off the wedge-shaped rock cropping near the shore. Watching my children play on the beach — about ages 4 and 8 at the time — I decided to head back and join in the fun.
But I wasn’t heading back to shore. I was going the other way.
The realization that you are helpless against the ocean leads to panic. I didn’t know what was happening, even though I had been schooled on rip currents as a reporter covering tragic drownings. Being caught in one myself was a different story.
What snapped me out of my growing anxiety was the whistle. Now on the beach a lifeguard was waving his arms and tooting away. Certainly, it couldn’t be me that he was trying to signal, was it?
Oh yes, it’s me. I’m the problem. It’s me.
He motioned me to swim parallel to the shore, around the rocks, and then to swim in. I remember the lifeguard telling me as I thanked him that it was not unusual for snorkelers to get caught in that particular rip current.
I am no Olympic swimmer but I was in my 30s and knew the fundamentals of freestyle, butterfly and backstroke.
Yet, I didn’t even know I was in a rip current. I just knew I was going nowhere fast.
Tom Mahady, ocean rescue chief for the city of Boynton Beach, told me recently that it’s the exhaustion and panic that lead to tragedy. He said the swimmer “gets out of rhythm” and becomes so confused that breaths for fresh air are taken underwater.
Not surprisingly, the day I was whistled to safety I was doing one of the top no-no’s in Mahady’s book. With my children watching, I ventured too far from shore. Kids are apt to ape their parents’ actions, Mahady said. “Monkey see monkey do” can be deadly when it comes to rip currents.
“Parents, sure, some of them are great swimmers, ex-lifeguards. But don’t create the herd effect by diving under the water, body surfing, that type of thing,” Mahady said.
Of course, it was all drama for the children and the in-laws — the wife just rolled her eyes. Yet, I don’t know what I would have done if the lifeguard hadn’t been doing his job and whistled me to safety.
It’s not surprising that a lot of drownings occur when there is no lifeguard on duty. So that is the first rule: swim in the presence of a professional. If rip currents are present, the lifeguard will hoist a red warning flag.
If you realize you are in a rip current — raise your hand or wave — but don’t fight the current. Float on your back. The National Weather Service says a rip current will take a swimmer out between 50 and 100 yards — then you can paddle parallel to the beach and then come to shore.
And be prepared. Before even heading to the beach, check the NWS forecast, which can be accessed at https://www.weather.gov/tae/ghwo_ripcurrent.
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