Rips and Undertow explained

For many of us, after the calm of summer come autumn winds, and with the winds, rougher conditions along the coast. This is a time when it’s good to remember that hand in hand with the tumbling surf  comes the danger of undertow and rip currents that pull away from shore.

Powerful shore-break on Brighton beach can create undertow

Rips are formed by surf when white water tumbles down the face of breaking waves toward shore. That water then escapes along the beach to a deeper channel cutting out to sea through the surf line as a rip current. Beyond the break line, the current dissipates. Rip currents are relatively narrow and focused currents, that can flow much faster than a swimmer can swim. The water carried to shore by the surf will drain along the beach until it reaches a rip. You can often feel the sideways pull of this alongshore current against your ankles in shallow water, and by walking downstream locate the rip. If you pass the rip, you’ll feel the water flowing in the opposite direction.

Arrows show rip current. Look for breaks in the lines of surf and also moving water

Viewed from shore, the rip will appear as moving water with more confused wave patterns than the surf on either side, and with smaller waves. The scouring effect of the current gouges out a deeper channel. As the waves push in and slow against the current, they converge and crisscross and run off to either side, leaving a visibly calmer channel. Rips are most easily seen from elevation. Once you have located a rip, look for landmarks that will help you locate it from the water.

If caught in a rip, escape by swimming across the current. Once you are out of the current the surf will help push you toward shore again. You’ll be quickly exhausted if you try to swim to shore against the rip current and if If you do nothing, you’ll be carried beyond the surf, so swim across the current.

Launching through surf to sea kayak, or to go surfing, the rip can offer an easy way through the break. (You can also read more in my book The Art of Kayaking).In a rip the waves are smaller and more broken, and the current will help carry you from shore. The danger is that once you’ve been carried out, you’ll find the conditions more than you bargained for, and have difficulty returning to shore.

A rip can easily help carry you out farther than you might want

So, although paddling out against the surf can be exhausting, it’s best to locate and then avoid the rips to start with, at least you know how big and powerful the waves really are today. When battling through waves from the beach between rips, you can easily turn back when you choose, before you meet the biggest waves. If you find yourself beyond the break, waiting for a big set to ride the biggest waves, and you are comfortable with the conditions, then you might consider using a rip to make your paddling out easier.

A rip is not the same thing as undertow, although you’ll often find the terms misapplied. Undertow is caused by shore-breaks, rips are caused by surf. But the two sometimes work together when there is both surf and a powerful shore-break. Undertow is caused by the backwash returning down the beach after a wave has broken. In certain wave conditions beach cusps form as a series of scooped out hollows separated by spurs pointing seaward. Each beach cusp focuses the power of the shore-break into a tongue of water rushing up the beach which drains back into a narrow channel of rapid water often powerful enough to sweep a person from their feet. This focused backwash drags through the next breaking wave, so it can carry an unwary person beyond the shore-break into deep water.

Returning safely to the beach might require outside assistance: for example, a throw-line.

Beach cusps funnel backwash into jets that push out to sea as undertow

When a beach has both a sizable shore-break, and lines of breaking surf, you can find both undertow at the shore, and rips running out through the lines of surf. The undertow can feed a swimmer into current that runs into a rip. The rip can deliver the swimmer beyond the break into ocean current. People swept from a beach by undertow don’t always return.

Rips and Undertow are beach hazards. The Rips and Undertow Video Presentation takes about ten minutes and shows more clearly what is going on. If you find it useful, please spread the word, and be safe!

Forty years since the telling… from UK before the end of 2007

In 1967 the British Canoe Union (BCU) magazine “Canoeing in Britain” published a Christmas competition with a prize of a copy of each of “Byde’s Books”. (In 1960 Alan Byde had become just the second person to be appointed Senior Canoeing Coach by the BCU. I’d better explain that in Britain a “canoe” was, and sometimes still does refer to both canoe and kayak.) More about Alan later…

In other news from 1967, a number of people expressed dismay and wrote to criticize one prominent sea kayaker, who shall be nameless, (Chris Hare) oops! Returning from an expedition to Greenland where he had hunted from his kayak with Greenlanders, Chris attempted to gain support for the introduction of seal hunting from kayaks in UK… not in the traditional way, but using a rifle, which was by then the usual way in Greenland. (are there any Seals reading this?)

Colin Mortlock, (later to lead the expedition in Norway, 1975, for which the paddle and kayak designed and used for the journey were also named “Nordkapp”), describes paddling Welsh white-water rivers in flood. His descriptions hint of the hands-on experience he applied to his Charlotte Mason College teachers course in "Adventure Education".

In 1967 an advertisement for the sea kayak, the Wessex Sea Rapier, demonstrated its on-land portability by showing it on the roof of a Morris 1,000 (cc) car… a model of car that I remember had little orange direction pointers that swung out from the supports between the side windows to indicate the direction of an intended turn… In 1967, a fiberglass Sea Rapier cost just 37 pounds 15 shillings… With today’s poor US dollar exchange value that’s about 74 dollars…

The magazine columns that year were full of interesting little revelations, such as “A Canadian is not really a sea going canoe”… and that during 1967, by September, two people had passed the Advanced Canadian examination… (...are there any Canadians reading this?) Next… “The Senior coach is on a par with the Gold Medalist, and is a gentleman to be reckoned with” (...any women reading this?) “To all but a rhinoceros it must be obvious that the only place to learn to roll is the swimming baths – in this country anyway.” (...any rhinos reading this?)

Also in 1967...

Hans Klepper died. He was the son of one of the original tailors who produced the first folding Kleppers in 1905 to speed up trips from the mountains. Han was associated with the design of the Klepper Arius in which Dr Hans Lindemann crossed the Atlantic.

Dave Mitchell (now of Mitchell Paddles in USA) won silver medal for slalom kayak in the world championships.

“The first thermoplastic kayak” was displayed at the annual boat show, (Telephone Kelsall 255) and Bude suffered its annual invasion of competitors for the week-long surf kayaking event.

In this context, back to Alan Byde again… Alan wrote a great book titled “Living Canoeing” which according to Alan was started in 1967. Published in 1969, it is a classic, with content still valid today. I can see how later writers have likely been influenced by the style of line drawings that illustrate many of the technical aspects, and by the content of the Sea Kayaking sections of the book. This was not Byde’s first, nor last writing achievement, but I consider it his finest. Returning to the photo of Byde upside down in his kayak on his lawn, you can see similar images (in sequence) in my own "Kayaking; a beginner's guide" and "Nigel Foster's Sea Kayaking". (See "roll" and "books")

(Alan signs a copy of "Living Canoeing", March 2007.)

An intelligent, versatile, yet often controversial figure, Byde retired to New Zealand where, this spring, we found him hiding away from his kayak. With the encouragement of local paddlers such as John Kirk Anderson, I gather he has resumed his participation in his sport and is once again "living canoeing". It was a real pleasure to meet up with and him and his wife in New Zealand; someone who has contributed so much to the sport and never lost his love for it.

(For more of 2007 New Zealand...)