So whenever I’ve heard about people getting into trouble at the beach I’ve always assumed it was either unsupervised kids or people swimming / surfing in deep water. I never thought anything like that could happen to me and my family because we always stayed in shallow water close to shore. I thought body boarding in the shallows was safe, especially when the tide was coming in, so me and the kids would paddle out to about thigh height, get on our boards and let the waves bring us back to shore. Unfortunately we were doing just that when we got pulled into a rip current and carried out to sea.
Rip currents can travel up to 2m per second and can pull you out the length of a football pitch in the space of 1 minute. You don’t even realise it’s happening until you suddenly see the beach looking very far away.
By the time I realised something was wrong and leapt off my board to test the water depth - I was up to my neck in water. I grabbed the kids and tried to wade back holding them above the water but the current was too strong and just kept pushing us back even further until the water started coming over my head. I had to scream for the kids to swim. Luckily, they are both good swimmers because we’d lost our boards in the panic. The boards should have been attached to our arms but the Velcro straps were rubbish and always came undone.
I swam to get the boards back and managed to grab two of them but by that time my kids had drifted further away. They were swimming on their backs by this point but I found it hard to catch them up and get back to them. The sight of them in the deep open water will haunt me for the rest of my life. Even though it was only a few metres they have never seemed to far away and out of reach. I really didn’t think we were going to make it.
We were incredibly fortunate that day because we had positioned ourselves near a local surf school which had trained life guards working for them and they came to rescue us. If we’d been on a more isolated beach then I dread to think what could have happened. We didn’t see any flags or signs to indicate any danger and we hadn’t managed to spot anything untoward from the shore. The beach we were on only had a voluntary life guard presence at weekends so lots of scope for accidents to happen for people like me not fully understanding the risks.
Prior to this, I’d heard of rip currents but didn’t know how common they were. I also didn’t know that they could pull you out from shallow water or really understand how quickly they could pull you in. (Apparently a rip current on the same beach had previously pulled in a horse and rider cantering along the shoreline). I had also thought body boarding in shallow water with me present was relatively safe. I was very wrong and would hate any other families to make the same mistake. I for one will never get on a body board again but I see so many people using them on social media. So AIBU to highlight that rip currents very much can get you in the shallow water and that body boarding might not be as safe as you think it is?
Please take care x
Have name changed as I haven’t been able to talk about this to anyone in RL yet. Am still too upset but wanted to highlight dangers for others before the bank holiday.