Growing up in Northern California, my strongest memories of July 4 involve predictable stuff: beach BBQs, the tangy smell of spent gunpowder, and watching fireworks next to large bodies of water. As an avid boogie boarder in my pre-teen years, riptides were a constant concern, though my ex-surfer mom kept my brothers and I well away from high-risk beaches. Partly, the fear had to do with the term itself, which is pretty turbid — “rip” by itself can be good, as in Jesse and the Rippers, but tide is leaden and menacing. It can’t even be bothered to be actually intimidating, it’s just inexorable. Together, it turns out, the two words signify a phenomenon — also known as a rip current — that’s scary but surprisingly easy to understand.

While I have to work this Saturday and won’t be making it to any beaches to celebrate Independence Day, I thought I’d share this nugget of info from the Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Travel helpfully entitled “How to Survive a Riptide.” While most of me doesn’t mind missing out the ever-frigid Santa Cruz waters, a skimboard, and plenty of opportunities to bust my tailbone with the aid of that device, I will be bummed to be missing out on sandy marshmallows and non-ironic blue collar beer.

How to Survive a Riptide
Riptides, or rip currents, are long, narrow bands of water that quickly pull any objects in them away from shore and out to sea. They are dangerous but are relatively easy to escape.

• Do not struggle against the current – Most riptide deaths are caused by drowning, not the tides themselves. People often exhaust themselves struggling against the current, and cannot make it back to shore.
• Do not swim in toward shore – You will be fighting the current, and you will lose.
• Swim parallel to shore, across the current – Generally, a riptide is less than 100 feet wide, so swimming beyond it should not be too difficult.
• If you cannot swim out of the riptide, float on your back and allow the riptide to take you away from shore until you are beyond the pull of the riptide – Rip currents generally subside 50 to 100 yards from shore.
• Once the riptide subsides, swim sideways and back to shore.

-Brandon

Tags: Beach, July 4th, riptide, Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Travel