Back in 1976, my church youth group went to the coast for a trip, we did all of the usual stuff, exploring, tide pool spelunking, food, drink, and shops, even swimming. Just an aside, even in summer the Pacific Ocean off of Oregon is brutally cold, but we went swimming anyway.
My brother and I had been on a swim team for many years and we were strong swimmers. Apparently as we got out pretty far past the surf line, the youth group leaders became concerned, so he swam out to "save" us. Big mistake. After he reached us, and told us to head back in, he began having trouble, so I hung back to help him in. My swimming credentials were solid, I had every first aid, CPR, life saving, and life guarding certificate available at the time through the Red Cross. Unfortunately the beach was shaped like a scallop shell with a relatively narrow mouth and a wide fanned beach, the shoulders of the mouth was rocky. This meant that the beach always created a "rip" current where the waves retreated through the center of the mouth creating a strong outflowing current. Brer and I knew this, and out strategy was alway to swim near the rocks to get back to shore, but this is dangerous if you are not a very strong, capable swimmer. The youth group leader was not. After about 15 minutes we had made only minimal headway, and he was floundering. Five minutes later, he was starting to panic, calling for help. So, I dove under him and came up behind quickly wrapping him up in an over the shoulder death grip. Then I talked him down from his fear, and convinced him I could swim him in, but he would have to relax, and let me do all the work. To do this I had to float him on my right hip as I sidestroked slowly. It worked, he calmed, and I set off. It took me well more than an hour of hard swimming, to cover a very short amount of water, but I could not risk swimming him near the rocks, so I was stuck bucking the current mid tide rip. When we got to shore, I was tired, and a bit cold, but the exercise had kept me reasonably warm. He was hypothermic, and brer and I had to drag him up the beach. Loads of fun after a long hard rescue. And, yes, the breaking waves posed a problem, and I would have loved to been able to hand him off to a chain of people to help drag him over the last 30-40 yards, but that didn't happen. Many years later I lost two in Mexico, I was not able to get to them before then went under, and I could not find them after. I've had a number of minor rescues over the years as well.
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