We used to live on the east coast, and rip tides were no joke- we heard fairly often of folks caught in them, some survived, some didn’t. We were told that if it ever happened to swin parallel to the rip current, not agaisnt it because it would tire you out quick if you tried to get back to the spot that you got stuck in the current from.
Twice, when my children and I were at the beach here on the east coast, someone drowned in the ocean. One was a young girl caught in a riptide. Another was a young man.