Getting carried out to sea, as you mentioned, can all to easily occur,and not just to those in rafts or boats. It nearly happened when I was in my teens in Maine. A friend and I went swimming early one morning without first checking tide tables, to ultimately find ourselves being dragged out to sea. My friend, a champion competition pool swimmer, started to shore with a beautiful form-perfect strong breast stroke. I, being a lowly self-taught swimmer, who could *never* win a race, swam in with a combination side-stroke and strange self-styled current-fighting-brief-rest pseudo-back-stroke. Despite looking ridiculous, it does work. About a half hour later, after finally making the beach, I looked back to see my friend still far out, struggling, and heard "I can't make it". No one else was on the beach at this early hour, so I went back in, and another half-hour or so later, we were both on shore again. *Now* the life-guard showed up for work, so word got back to our folks, who were not happy with our stupidity. We were both in trouble for not having checked the tide info, and I was in trouble for jumping back in (parental fear reaction). The point is, we new better, but a moment's laziness almost resulted in tragedy. Also, in the ocean, the strongest swimmer is not necessarily the strongest swimmer. Such are the vagaries of the sea. Regards, Leander leander_at_worldnet.att.net *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Jun 29 1999 - 04:37:15 PDT
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