For anyone involved in open water swimming in Ireland, the UK and other Northern Hemisphere cold water locations, being able to spot and diagnose dangerous hypothermia in a swimmer is an essential skill. To do that properly an understanding of hypothermia is useful.

It’s essential to understand that there is no such thing as sudden hypothermia. Most of us grow up hearing this myth, (for example I remember stories of survivors from the Titanic freezing to death in five degree water within fifteen minutes, and that fifteen minute myth is repeated all the time).

The heat in your body can’t instantly disappear. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is always the Universe’s governing and inviolate principle. Hypothermia is a developing situation over time. Your body has enough stored heat that even in zero degree water, you probably won’t develop severe hypothermia until about thirty minutes, though you will be subject to After-drop and potentially lethal consequences even if you emerge before that time. And Afterdrop itself isn’t a myth, as is sometimes inversely claimed to sudden hypothermia, it does exist.

Cold shock response is an entirely different thing to hypothermia, it’s the bodies response to sudden cold, with gasping reflex, hyperventilation and possible acute pain in hands, feet, face and head, and even cardiac events. The biggest danger in immersion is uncontrolled hyperventilation leading to sudden aspiration of water. You gasp and breathe water into your lungs and drown.

Breathing rate increases for the first 20 seconds in cold water

This is the main reason why a diving or jumping entry into cold water for people not cold-acclimated is absolutely a stupid thing to do, and not tough or macho. This response is attenuated in cold-adapted swimmers.

Definitions of Mild Hypothermia can vary depending on where you look but a core body temperature of between 35° and 36° when body-normal is 37° is a good measure, i.e. a drop of about two degrees is a good indicator. The hormone ADH, (anti-diuretic hormone) which controls urination in suppressed and some blood volume is shunted to the core so there is a decrease in blood volume and some dehydration also. There are no long-lasting effects of mild hypothermia, (such that it can be used as a medical procedure for brain protection during certain operations). Almost every serious open water swimmer in these waters will have experienced it as completely normal, and the body acclimates and adapts as we have seen before, by blunting initial response, reducing stress hormones, and increasing brown adipose tissue.

However, people with any diagnosed cardiac problems should avoid cold water swimming.

And also as we’ve often discussed previously, mild hypothermia leads to peripheral vaso-constriction, the reduction of blood flow in the periphery. With experienced open waters mild hypothermia is the completely normal and usual state, in Irish and UK waters. The swimmer will still be able to talk and will still retain motor control in the fingers, but often with reduced dexterity. Surface temperature will be decreased.

Mild hypothermia will of course lead to more severe hypothermia shgould the swimmer continue to be immersed or unprotected. Hypothermia will eventually result for everyone in temperatures under twenty degree is they stay swimming long enough.

There are no great  concerns in recovering from mild hypothermia, just get dry and dressed quickly, following the usual procedure of dressing the torso and head first, and warming up with a walk. Do NOT vigorously dry the extremities even in mild hypothermia.

In diagnosing mild hypothermia, simply seeing if there is some chattering or shivering out of the water. In the water is more difficult, but the swimmer might have clenched jaws and have a minor difficulty speaking freely, or maybe report lesser claw-like symptoms in the hands (lessening on full hand motor control).

In the next article we’ll look at Moderate Hypothermia.

 Related articles:

How we FEEL cold water (loneswimmer.com)

Peripheral Vaso-constriction in pictures (loneswimmer.com)

Where did my CLAW go? (loneswimmer.com)

Extreme Cold Adaptation in Humans Part 1 (loneswimmer.com)

Though May is officially Summer, we tend to think of it as Spring here in Ireland. And it’s the toughest period of open water swimming of the year.

Why? Because the water is still relatively cool and conditions are extremely variable (at the start of May, 7.2° Celsius in Tramore, 10°C in Sandycove, with a two to three degree possible range). We can (and did) have frosts and days where the temperature was below the water temperature and for half of May this year at least the average air temperature was about ten degrees Celsius.  The Aspirants and others have to be putting in the mileage training. Constant cold winds and low air temperatures bleed the heat and resistance from the swimmers, building a cumulative effect of attrition. It’s the 23rd of May this year before temperatures got to 12° Celsius (53.7° Fahrenheit to be exact) and the day was actually warm (18° Celsius).

When the water is colder no-one is doing much more than hour and generally only the experienced distance swimmers will do that, but some of the less experienced will look at calendar and think the date is all is all they need to know.

And there’s the repetition, the grind of getting very cold day after day, when it’s acceptable for one or two days, the first couple of weeks of getting hypothermia  every day, thinking on nothing but swimming, eating, cold and heat is like a millstone, grinding swimmers down in a race between breakdown or crack up, and making it to the degree or two warmer waters at the end of the month. All the Sandycove Channel swimmers and Aspirants will make it because it’s what Sandycove swimmers do.

Lisa & Finbarr finishing a six-hour Sandycove swim at the start of May, in temperatures under 11°C. On this swim Fin and Lisa did their 100th laps of the year, Lisa joined the 500 laps group (“C”), Fin joined the 1000 laps group (“M”).

Someone will do something extravagant and push their exposure but it will only feel good for a day because Sandycove swimmers Lisa Cummins and Finbarr Hedderman, two of the world’s great cold water marathon swimmers, who have no publicity machines, will out-swim everyone in time and distance.

Lisa on her second Sandycove Island lap, when the rest of us were still arriving. Zoom to see her.

Feel good because you did an hour? Lisa had two done before you got started.

Feel great because you did four laps of Sandycove? Lisa and Fin did twelve.

Just swum your first double lap of the year? Fin already passed his hundredth for the year.

Finally joined the Centurions (100 lifetime laps)? Fin became a Millenarian (1000 laps). (Liz, what are we calling that one?)

Related articles:

Sandycove swimmers: Pressure to achieve (loneswimmer.com)

Powerstown head from the Guillamenes

Sea Thrift that is, Armaria maritima, also known as sea pinks.

First thrift of 2012

Ireland’s Copper Coast has a lot of it, growing all along the coast on the cliff edges, in rock crevices and stony ground where nothing else grows.

Growing on otherwise clear stony rockfall

It’s a perennial which has a high drought and salt tolerance, in fact it seems to do best in the driest, most exposed locations, especially along cliff edges.

Faded Thrift on clifftop above Kilfarassey

Older plants will grow larger clumps of leaves and roots.

On top of a rock spire at entry to Gararrus

It’s apparently highly copper tolerant, and flourishes along the Copper Coast, and in fact if the Copper Coast were to have an icon flower it would have to be the thrift, which displays a subtle range of colour from pink to mauve and purple from plant to plant.

Its season is early summer, so the coast is rampant with it at the moment, one of the signs of summer for a south-east open water swimmer, water reaching 10 degrees Celsius, and passing the thrift on the steps down to the Guillamene.

When I think of it, and therefore the photographs I take, are as I most commonly see it, silhouetted against the sea or the sky, framing events in the sea, or faded but still present during the winter, and always standing against the onshore Atlantic winds.

Thrift & Sheep Island, sea, sky and flowers.

When you can appreciate thrift in such extraordinary scenery, why would you want to trap it in a domestic garden?

Thrift against sea and canoes at Kilfarassey

It seems I’ve taken a lot of pictures of thrift (there are 98 tagged in my library so far and many more I still want to take, so you can image it was difficult to choose just a few), from early season buds, to summer blooms and late season stragglers to dead winter flowers.

Winter Guillamenes thrift

Apparently … I love sea thrift.

On last Saturday’s visit to the Guillamene, a swim I didn’t want to do, because two days previously I’d had a bad asthma attack while pool training, (for the first time in two years), and I didn’t feel I was recovered. Also, though the start of the fourth week of May, the water temperatures were still down, only nine degrees the previous weekend, worse the air temperature was low, only ten degrees, with a north-easterly wind. When you live at fifty-four degrees latitude, northerly winds are always cold. It felt just like winter and when I measured the temperature at the Guillamenes, it was on a par with the air temperature, ten degrees, yes a rise over the previous week, but with the chilly wind and the lowering dull grey sky and no-one around, it was less than inviting.

And as I said, the wind was north-easterly. As this point it’s useful to show you (again) how the Guillamene is situated.

Tramore Bay

The bay faces south-west (directly up is North in this image), the Guillamenes is on the west wide, so looking out from the platform you are facing south-east. It’s sheltered from the prevailing south-westerlies, but exposed to south-easterlies, easterlies and even north-easterlies.

The bay is just under five kilometres wide from Newtown Head to Powerstown head, a not-insignificant distance. Therefore a Force Three north-easterly wind will have about four kilometers of water to blow over before it reaches the Guillamenes. You may recall we discussed this in Understanding Waves for Swimmers a long time ago. The distance of water over which water blows is called the fetch. The greater the distance over water which wind blows, the greater the waves and chop that can be pushed up.

Apart from the fetch, the strength of the wind is important. I have long thought the ability to observationally measure wind using the Beaufort Scale should be an essential skill for serious open water swimmers.

Force Three on the Beaufort Scale is also known as a “gentle breeze”, a more pleasant title. Force Three is however a critical measurement for open water swimming because at Force Three scattered whitecaps start to appear, as crests start to crumble from the wind. This means an increase in rough water to the swimmer. (If you see choppy-ish water with no whitecaps, it’s Force Two). Below is a very boring picture of all these facts! A Force Three wind, blowing onshore, across a four kilometre fetch. It’s full size if you click on it and want a better look at what Force Three looks like, but it’s pretty unexciting. If you look around you’ll see those occasional whitecaps.

You can of course swim in Force Three, but you’ll be slowed down. It took me almost twenty-five minutes to pass the pier, where it would normally take twenty. I call Force Three critical because it’s the transitional point into rough water.

And because video is better for this, here’s a short clip. (With the wind blowing across the microphone, you might want to turn your volume down first).

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This second video is taken from the water. However, this was taken underneath Doneraile Head, and the fetch that wind was blowing across was less, so though the wind was the same, and blowing the same direction, the waves were less.

.

Related articles

• HowTo: Swimming in rough water (loneswimmer.com)
• Unusually good weather (loneswimmer.com)

He placed behind Sergey Bolshakov (Russia), World Championship 2011 Bronze in 10km, who won in 1:54.04 and David Davies (Great Britain), 2008, 10km Olympic Silver, all according to Chris’ own Twitter account.

The water was a toasty 23 C with 6 laps of 1.6k. The field was 28 men from seven nations.

Euro 10k Cup course

Look forward to an upcoming Guest Article from Chris when he has time (which is rare), I don’t want to press him unnecessarily, but maybe this will serve as a gentle reminder!

His next and final target before London is another Euro Cup 10k in Portugal on June 7th.

Since I’ve written a lot about cold, it’s a safe assumption (and correct) that subject is one of mine. But there’s another I don’t write about enough, parly because it’s not so amenable to written description, and that’s rough water swimming.

Rough water experience is essential to be able to deal with sudden changes in weather and water conditions. It makes for a well-rounded and adaptable open water swimmer, and I think skill in rough water is essential of ongoing safety.

For swimmers aiming for a serious target like an Ironman or first 5 or 10 k swim, I think one should train in as much rough water as you can tolerate, always being aware of the injury potential.

Rough water is a pretty broad description though that varies for the swimmer according to wind direction and swim direction.

Big swell with no wind will not produce rough water, where no swell and wind will. Rough water is a product of wind, usually onshore or cross-shore, and often caused by that much-disliked by open water swimmers phenomenon of wind-against-tide. Swimming into head-on wind is different to following wind and different again from cross wind.

Donal heading out into two metre swell and F2 onshore at the Guillamenes

• Head-on wind and chop

Head-on chop is both tiring and potentially injurious and will slow you down. It will also affect the normal balance of a stroke making the stroke shorter. With asymmetric short period waves, there will no discernible pattern of waves to the swimmer. Sometimes having cleared one wave, you will crash immediately into another. Repeated impact across the head and shoulders can be the main problem. Also, the timing for sighting and breathing is changed.

More specifically, you need to learn to adjust your stroke. In head-on chop I drop my head lower than normal, and make a point of keeping low and maintaining rotation, difficult in the circumstances, to go partially under some of the chop and small wavelets, which minimizes the impacts. Other swimmers may have different techniques.

As with all open water, try to separate your breathing from your sighting. In head on chop, as soon as you sight, you may have a sudden wave directly in front of you. Try to time your sighting from the top of a wave.

• Tail wind and following chop

In tail-chop (a following wind) I am most likely to swallow a mouthful of water. As I roll to breathe a wave can come from behind and swamp me. My solution to this is to focus more on my feet as an indicator of something coming, in essence an early warning system. Like radar but with feet!

I breathe bilaterally (every three strokes to each side). Therefore if I’m about to breathe and a wave arrives from behind, I’ll instead often not breathe and maximise usage of the wave for speed, taking little surfing bursts of speed if I can. This is also a reason hypoxic training is useful, to be able to adjust breathing timing or delay a breathe to account for changing circumstances.

• Side chop and cross winds

Side-chop is the most difficult for many. Breathing into side-chop is a big problem leading to both swallowed and aspirated water. The only solution is to breathe to the other side. But even those of us who breathe bi-laterally will have a favoured side. I can’t maintain breathing on my left weaker side for a long period and not start to get tight in my shoulders, neck and biceps.  However water is rarely so rough that I can’t least maintain some kind of irregular bilateral breathing to relieve that strain.

• Local effects

As with so many other aspects, there are often local effects to complicate things further.

In Tramore Bay onshore winds drive chop and waves along the side of the bay, whereas in Sandycove  onshore winds run directly into the outside of the island. The Guillamene is mostly deeper and it’s possible to swim further out, but behind Sandycove we swim closer in, choppy waves are reflected off the back of the island and the shallower bottom to make challenging water conditions. In Sandycove however the rough water is only a portion of a lap, whereas in Tramore Bay there’s no shelter from onshores and the bay also has a couple of spots where the water conditions changes, (passing the Colomene, outside Newtown Cove, and just inside Newtown head.

Not wishing to belabor the obvious or subdivide further, there are also diagonal winds and chop. A diagonal wind and chop direction can present even more problems as you may not see nor feel it arriving. The above are just ways of using experience to adjust to the situation. With practice and experience you will discover your own methods to minimise, where possible the difficulties of rough water, but it will still always be rough and therefore more tiring.

BTW, on an unrelated note, I’m not 100% about the new site layout. Any thoughts? Yea or nay? Options to adjust individual items I’d like to change from they are limited. Stay with it or go back to the last layout?

Related articles

• Understanding rough water, Force Three (loneswimmer.com)
• How waves can interfere with swimmers and cut down on their speeds (loneswimmer.com)
• Beaufort wind scale, an essential observational skill for swimmers (loneswimmer.com)

A few months ago, I collected some the related fears of open water, and suggested we use Megalohydrothalassophobia, as a name for the fear of underwater creatures. Here’s another one for the causal list.  The Cascade creature, aka deepstar enigmatica, or the Placental jellyfish, apparently though not rare, but only seen intact a few times. Checking around it seems like it’s about 50cm in diameter, and is usually a more common bell shape, but the turbulence from the submarine turns it inside out and give it that really creepy motion.

Anyone who’s ever had an unexpected encounter with a plastic bag while swimming will shudder at this one. Plastic bags are scarier than jellyfish.

More details/speculation on the creature here.

All the Megalohydrothalassophobia related articles:

List of open water fears (loneswimmer.com)

Anomalocaris. (loneswimmer.com)

Eel Shark. (loneswimmer.com) (My favourite)

Giant saltwater crocodile (loneswimmer.com)

Conger eels (loneswimmer.com)

Sea lice. (loneswimmer.com)

Now THAT’S a jellyfish. (loneswimmer.com)

It’s with trepidation I approach this subject. I don’t have the medical background that seems essential in trying to understand all of it so bear with me and any potential mistakes I’ve made.

Years ago I discovered the best questions were the dumbest questions, the ones where you are almost embarrassed to ask, but when you do, you discover more than you hoped to find.

After the two recent posts on the value of long swims and the post swim fatigue caused, I asked myself just what was the fatigue we all experience for a week or longer after long training swims (six hours and greater). It was such an obvious question I felt stupid by framing it to myself. What I found, in as far as I can tell, is that this is an area that is still very much being researched and not all the factors are known. Quoting this abstract on physical fatigue, “physical exercise affects the biochemical equilibrium within the exercising muscle cells. Among others, inorganic phosphate, protons, lactate and free Mg2+ [magnesium] accumulate within these cells. They directly affect the mechanical machinery of the muscle cell”.

As you will see, we could consider this one side of fatigue, that of muscles and the causes of muscle fatigue.

We know that endurance exercise requires energy and for distance swimmers this means first using the glycogen stored in muscles, blood and liver, and after that’s consumed, later switching to ketosis and starting to use fat stores. So there is an initial fatigue or tiredness caused partly by energy depletion. But 24 hours later, the body’s glycogen stores are pretty much replenished (but not entirely, depending on food type High Glycemic Index food replenished stores faster, type of sugar has an effect also, maybe even that the Golden Window oft referred to, isn’t relevant, and various other factors).

We also know, I think, that carb-loading works, and various strategies for carb-loading are better than others. On long swims, depending on effort, type of sessions and previous training, we may experience muscle soreness. Generally, if you are trained enough, this isn’t too common a problem and muscle soreness is a sure obvious sign of over-work. Part of the fatigue and recovery process is for muscles which have been worked to the point of breakdown to recover and the micro lesions get repaired. This is how muscles get bigger and/or stronger. When the exertion is enough, this may result in DOMS, delayed onset muscle soreness, that can last for a few days. DOMS is a whole subject onto itself, and it’s not what we’re concerned about here, but similar long-lasting effects without the soreness.

Muscle work is done by a process called the Excitation–contraction coupling mechanism, whereby an electrical discharge at the muscle initiates chemical events at the cell surface, releasing intracellular calcium, which causes calcium sensitive proteins to contract using ATP (Adenosine Tri-Phosphate, produced from glycogen or fat) ultimately causing muscle action. Lower ATP is part of the post-swim energy depletion mentioned above. However for long-term fatigue, the problem is not a lack of phosphate, but an impairment of the excitation–contraction mechanism, and possible other causes. This article, which is based on some actual studies such as this and this, says that part of tiredness, the inability of the person to make the muscles work to what they had previously, is actually also related to changes in the brain and communication between the muscle itself and the intra-cortical area of the brain. It seems like, (if I am reading it all correctly), there is a negative feedback loop operating between the two, with responses from the muscles during a tiring activity signalling the cortex to reduce the force (contraction) that can be applied. That mean it’s not just the muscle’s inability to function but that there is a central nervous system (CNS) fatigue also (whereas the muscular aspect is metabolic fatigue) and it seems that the CNS fatigue is the one that takes longer to recover from, that makes us feel low after long swims. On one study I read, (I seem to have lost the link for that one), it was found that immediately after stopping due to perceived exhaustion (on a cycling stress test), the muscles were still capable of exerting three times the work necessary for the test.

As this study says, “Fatigue from SDE [Short Duration Exercise] may arise primarily from metabolic mechanisms, whereas fatigue from LDE [Long Duration Exercise] involves an additional slowly recovering nonmetabolic mechanism that may arise from impaired activation, beyond the cell membrane, at the level of excitation contraction coupling”. Symptoms of CNS fatigue include lack of motivation, poor mood, impaired cognitive ability and incorrect perceptions of exertion levels –  where we think we’re exercising/swimming harder than we actually are. Sound familiar? The body needs rest and we need to avoid injuring ourselves. Fatigue cold (and has been) even described as a brain-derived emotion that regulates the exercise behavior to ensure the protection of whole body homeostasis. If we didn’t have fatigue feedback, we’d overuse muscles and probably injure ourselves but at the same time, endurance performance itself is limited by perception of effort as the primary reason for stopping. (More to come on this in another post,as so often happens when I start one of these science-based posts). Possible causes of fatigue, long-term and short-term:

• DOMS
• CNS fatigue (neurotransmission problems)
• Insufficient hydration
• Low insulin
• Increased ammonia in blood
• Disturbed hormone and electrolyte levels
• Other nutritional (vitamin or trace element) deficiency
• Low glycogen
• Tryptophan depletion

This isn’t a comprehensive list, just what I’ve come across. I had to stop at some point. I’ve found some impossible to understand (for me) speculation about potential mitochondria damage, and I’m sure there are other possibilities that are completely mainstream. This is all very well and interesting, you probably won’tsay, but what does it mean in terms of recovery? How can we shorten recovery or do it better or differently. Is there anything that helps? I think we’ll stop here, more study is called for, maybe we’ll return to this at some point. There are no smilies in scientific papers.

Related articles

• Post swim nutrition – the Golden Window (loneswimmer.com)

• One cup of porridge oats
• 2 tablespoons each of honey or maple syrup, and peanut butter
• You could also add sultanas or raisins or flaked almonds

• Mix the peanut butter and honey to a paste

• Add the oats and continue mixing

• Place on grease-proof paper and flatten to make a bar, cut into slices
• Place in freezer for 5 minutes (just to firm up)

It’s also about 1100 calories total, so 350 calories per bar when cut into three, useful for travelling to early morning swims or airports. Also I dislike both Maple Syrup and honey, but when mixed with oats and peanut butter, neither are obvious to taste.  I did try it during a long swim a couple of years ago and it took a bit too much chewing.

I’d guess that you could extend it even further, no reason you couldn’t try Nutella for example. Or flax oil or goji berries, etc..

I’ve considered flattening the bar right down, adding a line of jam and adding a second layer on top, like a nicer version of those highly processed Breakfast Bar things.

I’ve previously written a couple of posts on understanding waves, theory and some practical.

Writing recently about the 2010 eight hour pool-training swim followed by a sea swim, I was reminded of the problems waves present for many swimmers.

As we’ve seen in the previous articles waves occur where an open ocean swell meets where water gets shallow, on beaches, reefs, and rocks. Waves are somewhat unpredictable even in good conditions and care must be taken of them. So entering the water in the presence of waves requires some degree of caution, dependent on wave size. Trying to exit on rocks or reefs, in even small waves, is fraught with danger.

So why do waves present such difficulty? It’s simply because water is dense, denser than a human, and heavy and anything heavy has a lot of inertia. Difficult to start, divert or stop.

Everyone has probably stood on a beach in waist high waves and felt how easily the waves can push one around.  One cubic metre ( 1 metre x 1 metre x 1 metre, a fraction of a whole chest high wave) of water weighs one thousand kilograms. Did you ever try pushing against even a small car weighing the same? You are not as powerful as water, a six foot tall man is weaker than a five foot tall wave.

Children learn to jump as the waves approaches to go over the top, or to jump into the wave and let it take them, or to stand with one foot and chest forward to try to hold their position. These are all approaches to the mass of the wave and all and more can be used by swimmers.

Rob Dumouchel shared the video below with me, which perfectly illustrates the problems faced by swimmers unfamiliar with waves.

I hope you noticed the guy on the left at the start, who disappeared pretty quickly. He knew what to do. Instead of standing around like a scared duckling, trying to progress by hopping forward and getting pushed backward, he went under the waves.

Power within a wave is concentrated when it is breaking in the crashing top of the wave. Waves breaking into shallow water, even without being large, will travel fast and slow movement with a lot of lower density white water being pushed ahead.

The water in front of a wave is sucked up into the wave face, while the wave is moving forward so you may get a quick sensation of speed just before the wave hits. You can use this speed to your advantage to get under the wave. Just duck down and forward under the wave and then up and you will pop out well behind the wave lip and past most of the drag of the breaking water.

Remember that water being dumped on beaches by waves needs to escape back outward, so most beaches will have “channels” (some steep beaches will  instead have dangerous undertow).

The trough in front of a wave is lower than the average height, whereas the water behind a wave lip is higher. So if you plunge into a wave face and exit behind, you will be higher up, but if you come up just behind the lip of a crashing wave, you have to be careful not to get dragged back over the edge, “going over the falls”, though is generally not a problem unless you are very close.

In this image of Annestown beach, though the waves are only waist-high, one can see that the shingle isn’t all the same height, some is banked. The areas between the banks are more likely to be deeper, and more likely to be channels as this trough extends outward. The difference will usually look somewhat subtle, but is pretty consistent. If you notice in the image, where the arrow starts, the sand extends further into the shingle as this is a lower trough and this recurs along the beach, so there is actually more than one channel, more visible the more water is trying to escape. However Channels tend to exist closer to the beach and as you escape beyond the initial whitewater, the effect will dissipate.

Wave water escape channel at Annestown beach

• Don’t panic. As I have said before, there is no situation made better by panic and most will be made worse, especially at sea.
• Don’t try to get away from waves. You won’t win. Face them and work with what they are doing.
• Look for channels, the narrow and usually deeper areas where waves aren’t breaking, where the incoming water has to escape back out to sea. That’s your easiest way out. But once in a Channel, don’t try to swim back in against it.
• In water where you can walk, angle your body sideways to oncoming whitewater, and brace yourself as you move outwards, moving out in the intervals between the wave fronts.
• Once you reach chest deep water, if you are over sand, it becomes harder to progress by walking even with no waves, so get swimming.
• The best approach when going out from a beach is to dive under the oncoming waves.
• Don’t take a huge intake of air, it’ll be harder to submerge. Instead hold the air into your lungs instead of trying to hold a mouthful. Popping under and behind a big wave is a pretty quick task.
• Don’t try the same thing with waves breaking over rocks. Because idiocy.
• Swimming against a rip current is a poor decision. Change your angle by 45 to 90° and you will quickly move out of it.
• As you progress out pass the breaking waves, triangulate your position so you know where you started, might need to finish. Line up two objects, one of front of the other, a house and tree or similar, and you will be able to tell your position along a beach. otherwise you can be 100 metres to either side and it will still look like the same place.

Related Articles:

Waves for swimmers, Part 1 (loneswimmer.com)

Waves for swimmers, Part 2 (loneswimmer.com)

Exploring freak waves (loneswimmer.com)

Grid waves (loneswimmer.com)

Tides for swimmers, theory (loneswimmer.com)

Tides for swimmers, local effects (loneswimmer.com)