Mrs RB has been swimming in the sea this morning and I’ve been parading up and down the beach keeping an eye on her.
If you are smart and stay within your limitations it is a good start, but a healthy respect for the sea is vital.
Do people never learn, searching for another missing swimmer at Camber Sands at the moment!
We were talking about this in the pub last night. The family of one of the lads that drowned the other day said that there should be lifeguards posted permanently on the beach. It is over 7 miles long and it would take dozens of lifeguards to keep watch at Camber. Accidents do happen but people also need to take responsibility for their own actions.
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The woman has been found safe and well!
Reading the BBC articles, it’s still not entirely clear to me what is being suggested has happened. Apparently the sandy sea floor was undulating (sand bars) and so when the tide came in there were regions that were shallow and regions that were deep. The BBC says that rip tides were not thought to be an issue and doesn’t say anything about quick sand. So is it simply a case that these guys couldn’t swim at all, couldn’t tread water, and somehow found themselves in one of the deep regions? I guess they must have been wading in the water, suddenly the sand unexpectedly dropped away and they got into trouble. Or alternatively the tide came in when they were stood in a trough and they couldn’t climb out of the trough as they couldn’t get purchase on the sand, that seems more likely on the basis that all 5 of them died. But if they were really such bad swimmers what the hell were they doing in the sea in the first place?
I don’t know the area, Sticky, but I read somewhere that the tide at Camber comes in faster than walking pace; so, perhaps what happened is that these fellas walked out across the higher parts of the sand-bars, which would have been exposed and clearly visible when the tide was out, but would quickly become hidden under water once the tide turned. Wading ‘blind’ back to the shore, it would be almost inevitable that these poor chaps would eventually stumble into a trough of a sand-bar and into deep water.
Like I say, I don’t know the area, so I’m only surmising this is what happened; however, if this was the case then I should think there ought to be warning signs alerting people of the potential danger (if there aren’t signs already, that is).
It does come in very fast. Whenever I have been there I havent seen any of these sand bars but they did say that some have formed after recent storms. It is a lovely sandy beach and when the tide is out you have to walk for hundreds of yards before the sea comes up to your knees. It is so shallow I have been amazed by the drownings in recent weeks. I cant recall many other incidents in recent years.