Yep. I come from a commercial fishing family. The Oregon coast is gnarly, I'm told, and that water is damned cold. Enchante writes: "... and the whole thing about she was gone by the time he took off his jacket — that sounds very hard to believe ...."
Not for me, not if she's tiny, not if she's not used to fairly big waves and certainly not if she was wearing clothes or boots that could weight with water quickly and sink, and not if the water is swelling and surging, especially on a rocky shore. The ocean is a whole 'nother ballgame when it comes to being in the water -- this from a person who played in pretty big waves a lot as a kid and first SCUBA dove at the age of 14.
In my home fishing town, we had a lot of wonderful tourists, great, friendly folks, come to the coast for a weekend of fishing from California's central valley, Bakersfield, Fresno, the oil towns of Taft, the farm towns of Delano and Visalia. They often underestimated the ocean and its deceptive calm. My fisherman brother sadly named an area outside the breakwater "the Bakersfield Triangle" because of the tourists lost there every year. I say "sadly" because neither he nor any of his fellow professional fishermen took any joy from it nor found any real amusement in it. They all knew enough pros who made simple mistakes or miscalls and sometimes lost their boats or their lives.
You said — “The Oregon coast is gnarly, I’m told, and that water is damned cold.”
Very much so. If you’re in that water, you’re not going to last more than a few minutes, because of hypothermia. You’re done for — on the Oregon Coast — in just minutes, if you’re in that water...
And it *is* gnarly out there on that coastline. It’s rough and the waves can get big and there are rogue waves... It’s dangerous out there on that coastline...
Absolutely brutal. Sometimes I'm amazed that I survived to adulthood.