Couple years ago I was snorkelling in Hawaii by myself. Family was on the beach not too far away. All of a sudden the life guards started freaking out blowing horns and stuff and the waves started crashing in. I got caught in a rip tide and sucked way out with nothing but a mask, snorkel and a pair of stupid fins.
I know you're supposed to swim parallel to the shore to escape the rip tide, but before I realized what was happening I tried as hard as I could to swim straight into shore. There's nothing more tiring and demoralizing than swimming as hard as you can in one direction and have Mother Nature send you further back than where you started from.
Life guards and other paddle surfers rescued most of the swimmers who got sucked out like me. I managed to swim into shore on my own (way the fack down the beach from my family mind you), and learned a valuable lesson that day. Thankfully I learned how to swim as a kid and will definitely make sure all my kids do the same.
I grew up swimming and even did the life guard courses and good ole Bob Bahan. When I was young I swam lakes, rivers, oceans you name it. I have two little ones that both love to swim and we do a lot of it. My 5 year old has been in lessons and will sign up again but my 3 year old has not.
My sister in law has a huge fear of swimming. She will go into a shallow end of a pool and stand there but she won't go anywhere near natural water. She completely freaks out. I have tried to help/teach but it is tough.
Couple years ago I was snorkelling in Hawaii by myself. Family was on the beach not too far away. All of a sudden the life guards started freaking out blowing horns and stuff and the waves started crashing in. I got caught in a rip tide and sucked way out with nothing but a mask, snorkel and a pair of stupid fins.
I know you're supposed to swim parallel to the shore to escape the rip tide, but before I realized what was happening I tried as hard as I could to swim straight into shore. There's nothing more tiring and demoralizing than swimming as hard as you can in one direction and have Mother Nature send you further back than where you started from.
Life guards and other paddle surfers rescued most of the swimmers who got sucked out like me. I managed to swim into shore on my own (way the fack down the beach from my family mind you), and learned a valuable lesson that day. Thankfully I learned how to swim as a kid and will definitely make sure all my kids do the same.
My brother and I were caught in a similar situation in Mexico. I remember thinking I'm screwed and looking back at him about 15-20 feet behind me furiously swimming. We probably swam flat out for 10-15 mins and ended up almost half a km down the beach.
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On photon's note, even if you don't want to/"can't" learn how to swim, you should at very least do yourself the favour of teaching yourself to float. To float, first and foremost, you need to be calm, so you need to get yourself comfortable with being in water.
Floating is the part of swimming which is hard, isn't it? I can swim until I get tired and stop and just will sink to the bottom. I think just about anyone knows how to "swim", floating is the hard part.
My 8 year old has done tonnes of swimming classes and he's still terrible at it. Not sure what it is. He is a wicked athlete in pretty much everything he does but he gets in the pool and he's terrible. I turn down swimming birthday parties because he will drown. He sinks like an anchor.
Different kind of coordination? His mind might be trying to skate rather than swim? I don't know. Every weekend seems like a pool birthday party out here. I have done 8 since school let out.
I tried to teach a friend of mine to swim when we were at SAIT. Dude was crazy ripped, 5% body fat kind of guy. Sank like a rock the instant he touched the water. It was something to behold. I just get fat now so my belly will naturally bring me back up...
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Another important piece of information related to this story, is how to recognize someone is drowning. I don't think in this case, people were oblivious to the fact he was in trouble, but the idea that drowning people thrash about, yelling for help, is false:
Often people in real trouble - don't look like they are in real trouble.
Thanks for posting that. I honestly had the totally wrong idea of what a drowning person looked like. Thought it was wild thrashing and yelling for help (as portrayed on TV/movies). Here is the video showing what a typical drowning victim looks like.
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I got caught up in some rope slack on a boat about 15 years ago. It caught me on the back of my leg a launched me out of the boat in the Lake Okanagan. I was lucky the it didn't wrap around me and drag me under and that it threw me enough so I didn't catch anything at the back of the boat. With no life jacket, had to swim with clothes on for about a minute until they got back to rescue me. Ended up with a nasty scar on the back of my leg at the knee joint. I imagine that with how sudden this happened I easily could have drowned if I didn't know how to swim.
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I got caught up in some rope slack on a boat about 15 years ago. It caught me on the back of my leg a launched me out of the boat in the Lake Okanagan. I was lucky the it didn't wrap around me and drag me under and that it threw me enough so I didn't catch anything at the back of the boat. With no life jacket, had to swim with clothes on for about a minute until they got back to rescue me. Ended up with a nasty scar on the back of my leg at the knee joint. I imagine that with how sudden this happened I easily could have drowned if I didn't know how to swim.
I don't get this. Whenever I go boating with my friends, they look at me like I'm a complete nerd when I put on a life jacket. I know how to swim just fine, but I still don't trust myself to make it back to shore if something happened or if I was injured in a boating accident. It seems really stupid to get into a boat without a life jacket no matter how well you can swim.
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I don't get this. Whenever I go boating with my friends, they look at me like I'm a complete nerd when I put on a life jacket. I know how to swim just fine, but I still don't trust myself to make it back to shore if something happened or if I was injured in a boating accident. It seems really stupid to get into a boat without a life jacket no matter how well you can swim.
Nerd!
Last time I went wake boarding I was wearing the most pathetic excuse for a life jacket. When I was waiting for the boat to straighten out I had to tread water with my elbows while holding on the the tow rope to stop my torso and head from going under while my board stayed up.
At least it looked sleek. I would've left a stylish corpse.
I don't get this. Whenever I go boating with my friends, they look at me like I'm a complete nerd when I put on a life jacket. I know how to swim just fine, but I still don't trust myself to make it back to shore if something happened or if I was injured in a boating accident. It seems really stupid to get into a boat without a life jacket no matter how well you can swim.
Yep, just because it isn't the law doesnt mean you shouldn't be wearing one. Its easy to fall off a boat. So many preventable deaths.
Half of me wearing a life jacket is so that if I were to die in a boating accident you don't look stupid with the article saying lifejackets were onboard the boat but not worn by the occupant.
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I don't get this. Whenever I go boating with my friends, they look at me like I'm a complete nerd when I put on a life jacket. I know how to swim just fine, but I still don't trust myself to make it back to shore if something happened or if I was injured in a boating accident. It seems really stupid to get into a boat without a life jacket no matter how well you can swim.
More to the point; you could be an Olympic level swimmer and that would mean jack #### if you got knocked unconscious and went overboard.
Last edited by cDnStealth; 08-19-2014 at 09:18 AM.
I also come from an immigrant family and my parents felt it was a life skill as well. I did the whole red, blue, green color thing then went on to do the auqa levels until I hit 12. Let me tell you I hated all of it.
This weekend I went up to Fairmont and we had a boat and the opportunity presented itself to go water skiing and wakesurfing. I def wore a lifejacket but needless to say I had a blast! It's such a fun activity that I would encourage anyone to try it, even if you have a fear of open water. Another thing I tried that I was too scared to do when I was little was go off the 3/4 meter diving board. I saw all these 5,6,7 year olds jump off doing all these dives and flips, so I said screw it Im going in full dive head first, first try. What an AWESOME experience. It was a cool feeling when you hit the water smoothly. I now see the benefit of swimming lessons, not only because it is a life skill which I feel everyone should have but it also made my weekend a hell of a lot better.
I encourage everyone, old or young, to learn how to swim.. who knows it may save your life one day
I still don't like to dive. That was one part I hated about the Red Cross swimming lessons. It's nice that they really gave you the full package and taught you every single possible thing but even going off the 3 meter diving board freaked the hell out of me as a kid. But again, that's the part about pushing you out of your comfort zone when you are like 7 years old that takes away your natural fear of the water. The pool felt gross, the lessons were tough, and felt like a boot camp to me. I wasn't a very athletic kid and I never enjoyed it. I struggled to make the lap quota as it ratcheted up each color level. Ultimately, it was just enough though, to get me out of the comfort zone and I love swimming as an adult.
It's one of the finest examples of those things you might hate as a kid but absolutely learn to appreciate as an adult...along with music lessons or any other lessons, etc. I'd definitely have no hesitation in enrolling my own children through a thorough swimming regime. I can still smell the chlorine and chips from my childhood...
I don't get this. Whenever I go boating with my friends, they look at me like I'm a complete nerd when I put on a life jacket. I know how to swim just fine, but I still don't trust myself to make it back to shore if something happened or if I was injured in a boating accident. It seems really stupid to get into a boat without a life jacket no matter how well you can swim.
I rarely wear one on a ski boat, only when wakeboarding, tubing, and waterskiing.
Last year a guy drown in Chestermere lake, he couldn't swim and went tubing with no life jacket. That's some higher stakes tubing than I'm used to.
I said no, I could swim maybe 30 feet (in a pool) then I'd be done.
Because of that I made sure my kids had/have swimming lessons and feel comfortable in the water.
But it's no guarantee, my wife's uncle drown just last year and he was a strong swimmer. He was maybe 20 - 30 feet from shore, but the temperature of the water and the current did him in.
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I took lessons and can swim fairly well. I can also understand people who can't swim at all or just not very well. What I don't understand is people who can't swim going on bodies of water without lifejackets.
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I don't get this. Whenever I go boating with my friends, they look at me like I'm a complete nerd when I put on a life jacket. I know how to swim just fine, but I still don't trust myself to make it back to shore if something happened or if I was injured in a boating accident. It seems really stupid to get into a boat without a life jacket no matter how well you can swim.
I agree with you.
I will say that lifejacket and PFD are two different things.
In short, a lifejacket provides a great chance to keep you alive if you are passed out. IIRC, a lifejacket is designed to keep the wearer's head about water and flip them on their back. You can be knocked out and stay alive in a lifejacket.
A PFD will not do this, the wear of the PFD needs to remain awake to make full use of the PFD.
