Please stay safe on holiday (1 Viewer)

[lindylou]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...olboy-feared-drowned-off-coast-of-France.html

What a disaster on day one.

 

[Allanm]

That's tragic. His family must be absolutely devastated.
Allan

 

[magicsurfbus]

All the more tragic for having been completely avoidable - look at the description of the location and the normal conditions. Those beaches south of Bordeaux receive uninterrupted Atlantic swells and are not good places to swim unsupervised.

If you ever get caught in a rip current, go against all your instincts to head straight back to shore and instead swim across the current, parallel to the beach until you're out of the current and able to make some headway back to the shore, using breaking waves to help push you in. Learning to body surf and teaching it to others is a potential lifesaver. A rip current is like a small river flowing out to sea - you don't escape a river by swimming upstream: you swim to the side.

Better still, don't get into a rip current in the first place - they form in natural drainage gulleys in the sand, and will have fewer waves breaking over them because the water's deeper. Don't be fooled into thinking it's safer where there are fewer waves - far better to be among the breakers which are at least pushing you in the right direction. If you don't like waves don't go in the sea.

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