I used to be an avid body surfer. I’m a strong swimmer (swim teacher, former deep water guard, guard trainer, etc.) so I felt I was pretty safe in the ocean... until an undertow nearly swept me out into the atlantic.
I kept my wits about me, swam crosswise to get out of the current, and then, like an idiot, took one final wave back into shore, head in the barrel the entire time. It was glorious.
But, as I walked back to where my daughter and I had put our stuff, I realized, I had too much to lose to keep it up.
I swim in an olympic pool nearby, and when I go to the beach, I sit under a lovely umbrella and listen to my audiobooks.
No more open water for me.
close call- glad it turned out good- we were always taughtr that if we got caught in undertow to swim cross it, never agaisnt it- i was never a big ocean person- in maine, warm ocean is abotu 60 degrees or so- not warm at all- infact it’s very painful most of the time-
When I was a teenager I had to pull my kid sister’s friend out of a rip tide at Jax beach. I was a very strong swimmer and dragging that kid cross current got very scary. We ended up coming out about two hundred yards from where we started. People have no idea of the strength of undertow.
I was with a group of surfers in New Jersey when one guy 20 feet away got bumped by a very large shark. Probably a Bull Shark. My board collected dust in the garage for 25 years until I sold it on Craigs List a couple of years ago.
A couple friends and I were goofing off in the ocean while at a beach around Los Angeles. All of a sudden we noticed the beach was getting farther and farther away, we never noticed the rip tide carrying us out. Finally got out of it, but that was an unnerving experience.