Rip Currents: What they are and How to Save Yourself
This post may save you or a loved one's life from becoming a statistic.
Rip currents kill roughly 100 people per year in the US alone.
Sad thing is, these are all preventable deaths. During my days as an ocean rescue lifeguard I made 50+ rescues over a 9 year career and my gnarlier rescues were all made from rip currents.
The purpose of this post is to help prevent terrible stories like this:
Heartbreaking to read. Just brutal.
You can’t always depend on lifeguards.
A sign your lifeguard may be inexperienced is they go in for multiple rescues throughout the day. It means they aren’t setting their beach up properly.
Lifeguarding is preventative maintenance, it’s about keeping your swimmers away from life-threatening situations.
Plus some beaches can’t be staffed so if you go into the water on an unguarded beach you run a heavy risk if you’re not careful.
If you want to avoid a nightmare on vacation to the beach, then I suggest you keep reading.
Autist note: The best lifeguard is a dry lifeguard.
What is a Rip Current?
A rip current occurs when waves along the beach disperse causing water to become trapped between the beach and a sandbar, or other structures like jetties or piers.
A rip current is a temporary small sized movement of water funneling out to sea.
I was 12 years old when I learned how to navigate my way out of rip currents.
Our junior lifesaving program made us swim into rip currents (with close supervision) it forced us to learn how to get out the right way. Your swimming lessons as a child on steroids.
One of the reasons it’s such a problem is the unsuspecting weekend warrior doesn’t know what a rip current looks like.
Appearances of rip currents can be deceiving. To the average person, they may see less waves breaking and think it’s safe to enter which lures them to swim in these areas.
If anything, remember this:
Waves are pushing you back to shore. Almost like the ocean is rejecting you.
Rip currents pull you offshore.
How to Identify a Rip Current
Rip currents typically form near rock formations, sand bars, and piers. However, when they occur on sand bars those can be the most difficult to spot.
Polarized sunglasses can help these different colors pop out to make the rip currents more recognizable.
Some clues to help us out when scanning for rip currents on the beach:
Churning or choppy water
Water is murky or discolored
May have a sandy color to it
Waves aren’t breaking
Significant water movement pulling offshore
Rip currents can be caused by multiple different ocean conditions. Below are some conditions that are known to elevate the risk of rip currents:
Low tide or outgoing tide
Offshore wind
Conflicting swell and wind directions
Moderate surf (2ft - 4ft waves)
High surf (5ft - 10ft +)
If you get all of these conditions together it creates a ton of moving water and when water gets trapped by the shoreline, it needs an exit. The energy pushing the water inshore needs to come out at some point.
Which is why it’s called a rip current, because small rips going against the macro currents form.
These currents are powerful and can be sneaky fast when they’re large enough.
You’re Caught in a Rip now What?
Do not freak out.
If you are on a protected beach with lifeguards, put both your arms up and wave. Now is not the time for ego.
Tread with your feet and wave your arms until help is on the way.
Most people try to muscle the rip current and swim into it. That’s <redacted>.
I’ve even seen victims bail from their bodyboards/surfboards to try and swim through rip currents, it’s counter productive. If you have a flotation device, fucking use it!
Do not fight the current, you will tire yourself out and this is where the risk of drowning becomes real.
Shout out Baptist Health South Florida for the graphic
Use the current to your advantage and follow this protocol:
Stay calm and breathe in and out slowly
Call for help
Swim PARALELL to shore
Once you’re out of the rip the waves will push you into shore
It’s really that simple, the hard part is remaining calm.
Surf Tip: The Rip Current is your Friend
When surfing, rip currents can be used as key holes through the impact zone.
Think this through. You want to get out past the breakers out to the lineup.
Are you going to:
A: Paddle into the waves and have to duck dive each wave.
B: Leverage the rip current to pull you out to the lineup and avoid most of the waves.
Probably B right? If the surf’s pumping, I’m always looking for rip currents I can hitch a less strenuous ride out to the line up. Don’t work harder if you don’t have too.
You can walk out near rip current formations and then paddle out using the express lane. It’s all about efficiency.
Don’t over complicate this but I do not recommend this for beginners
Debunking Common Myths about Rip Currents
Rip currents are rip tides.
I will die on this hill.
Rip tides do not exist, it has nothing to do with tides. Rip currents can occur at any tide but some spots may be more prevalent on certain tides than others.
Rip currents pull you under.
False.
Exhaustion is what pulls you under. Rip currents pull you offshore until the current ends. Some go for a few hundred yards, others can be miles long.
Rip currents are only present in bad weather.
Nope.
One rescue I had was on bright sunny day, waves were a calm 1-2ft, with light winds. An old man slipped off the sand bar, the longshore current pushed him into a rip and he got sucked out to sea.
It can happen at anytime to anyone.
A strong swimmer can outswim a rip current.
Yes and no.
I once watched a veteran guard swim two victims through a rip. He was a collegiate swimmer and had rocks for brains.
Was it efficient? No
Did they go home safe? Yes.
Can Dan Gleesacc from Iowa on vacation to Tulum outswim a rip current? No shot.
Thank you for reading. If you made it this far, sharing this post may save a life so, please share to your friends and family.
The informative section of this post is over, switching gears to digital declutter.
Week 2 of Digital Minimalism
Another productive week in the books. Speaking of books, here’s the book that started this. (I’m not an affiliate)
Articles continue to be cranked out. I have a new copywriting business niche I’m pivoting towards. I’m aiming to have cold emails going out some time mid-next week.
I also did a 42 hour fast and only told 3 people about it, well a couple more now. Ended up dropping 5lbs which was cool, we’ll see if we can maintain this level of weight but my weekly diet has been in a caloric deficient, except weekends for the most part.
My goal is to get back down to 175lb range.
I’ve also been consistently running 1-2 times a week which is becoming less of a chore. 1-2x a week may not seem like a lot but my 2 mile time went from 20 mins down to 16 mins.
I’ll report back in the next post and see if the cardio gains makes a difference for this weekend’s run of swell.
The bulk of my leisure time is spent reading books and writing. I’m still opening my phone and I mostly find myself sifting through
and and other jungle members substack's trying to read every article.Before I felt like I couldn’t hold my attention span long enough to sit down and go start to finish, which was a real issue before I started this declutter.
However, I’ve been doing some housekeeping for my tackle boxes too.
I’ve been cleaning out my tackle boxes and reorganizing them based on which species to target. There’s nothing worse than when the fish are biting and you’re scrambling for the right lure they’re hitting.
Wen guest post @bowtiedhalibut?
But yeah, it’s been a lot of rubbing acetone on rusty tackle boxes, removing split rings, and putting new hooks on my lures. Boring stuff that I never had time for that I’ve taken care of.
I still am unsure how I’ll resume my life back on social media because I’m afraid of falling into the same old habits. After seeing all the benefits it’s making me wonder the point of instagram or reddit.
Why do I care what people think who don’t align with my values? Why do I let other people’s ideologies incept mine?
That being said only app I miss is the bird app and the circus on crypto twitter. I’ll be back but how should I return? How do I interact with Twitter without being glued to it and checking it like a crackhead?
But the answer to those questions are for another day. Stay toon’ed.
Thank you again for giving this a read it means the world to me.
Your friendly cartoon surf instructor,
BowtiedQuoll