We were at the beach body boarding on Saturday. The waves were a decent height, maybe 3' to 6' tall and the sun was shining. I went out, and caught a good wave in right away as Tracie was getting ready to come out. I waited a while for Tracie to get past the waves crashing right on the sand, but she couldn't seem to make it.
I went out again and Tracie decided to hang out on the beach. I must have been fooling around for half an hour or so trying to body board but I just wasn't catching any waves. I was pretty sure that I had a poor location as far as the break was concerned, so I came in to have lunch.
After a few bites of sandwiches, we were surrounded by seagulls. They call pigeons rats of the sky, but really, the actual rats of the sky are seagulls. They're ugly, they have an awful call, and are all around annoying. They wanted our lunch, but I just threw sea shells to them. When there are only a few seagulls, they can tell you're throwing shells, but in large groups they don't take any chances and go for it. It's pretty funny to see the disappointed looks they give you when they realize that they're holding a shell in their beak not a tasty potatoe chip or bread crumb.
The afternoon session of body boarding was just as bad as the morning session. We went down the beach and I headed out right away. The water near the sand was almost to my shoulders, but shallowed further from the beach nearly to my knees. Once again Tracie had a real hard time making it out. I came back to try to help her, but it is pretty hard to help someone in that situation. Eventually I decided to head back to our stuff to get my glasses so that I could just watch Tracie from the shore.
I noticed that where we happened to be there was a pretty strong current running parallel to the beach. It seemed similar to trying to walk in the South Saskatchewan River. I didn't think much of it at the time as I was able to get out of it right away. I looked over my shoulder as I was swimming back down the beach, I saw Tracie a long way North of me, and I attributed it to us swimming in opposite directions when in fact it was due to the current running north parallel to the beach.
I walked a block or two back to the bag got my glasses and started walking back. About halfway back I saw Tracie and she was very angry. She later told me that she was caught in a current and that it had turned out to sea and that she couldn't make her way back in. She trying swimming parallel to the beach when she realized that she was headed out to sea which is what you are supposed to do, but it didn't seem to help. (I think that it was because she was headed south back into the current that was moving her into the current that was headed west out to sea.) In any case Tracie was freaking out as she was coming parallel to the surfers who were the farthest out.
Then she heard a surfer yell, "OH Yeah!". She looked over her shoulder and saw a Huge wave crashing towards her and she started swimming as hard as she could to catch the wave back in to the beach. She went a long way in on the wave and then slid off the back of it. Luckily it had given her a little shoreward momentum and the next set of waves all pushed her closer and closer to the shore.
I think the first big wave got her out of the current which was really lucky. Needless to say, she is very angry at the sea right now.
This photo was taken on a different day.
-Gary
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