I don't remember ever seeing this specific topic on here, and thought we might come up with some interesting tips and stories on the subject of drowning.
I have only came close to drowning once on Matagorda beach on the east coast of Texas. I was around 25 years old then, and had never swam in the ocean before. My wife hadn't either since we were both from Oklahoma where there are no beaches or oceans.
She was floating and bobbing around about 100 feet off the shore line, and I was on the beach with my son. I noticed that she kept going farther and farther away from the beach, and figured that maybe she was just paddling out farther. In a few minutes she had gotten way out there, maybe 200 yards or so, and I knew something wasn't right.
I told Brad to stay on the beach, and I swam out to her. She did not have a clue that she was being pulled out to sea by undertow. I didn't know about undertow either, but I could feel it and knew at that point we both up a creek without a paddle.
I told her that we were getting ready to drown, and told her to start helping me paddle so we could get back to the beach, and of course she just panicked and started crying. I grabbed her and started trying to pull her back to the beach. Swimiing was getting me nowhere, but when the waves went out, I could still touch bottom so I would pull her as far as I could until the waves lifted us off the bottom, and then it would pull us back out for a distance. I kept doing that until I finally got us back to shore, but I barely made it and was so tired I dropped to the sand as soon as we got back on the beach.
Nobody had ever told me to just go out so far and swim parallel to the shore line until I was out of the undertow, and then just swim back in. We came very close to drowning that day, an the lack of knowledge almost cut our lives short.
So lets share our stories and knowledge on drowning avoidance, and how we got out of a bad situation! There are many ways to die in the water fromm canoe accidents, swift water rapids, freezing water accidents, falling through the ice, and so many more cases where water can take your life!
Bookmarks