FIrst post I have read this morning - made me chuckle. Great one, Johnny L.A.! Thx
And, you need to have enough breath left to blow the water out of the tube.
Not really. Its rahter easy to raise face/mouth a few inches above waterline and through side of opened mouth, take in a small/slow inhale that gives plenty of volume of air in lungs to clear tubing enough to take in bigger greath through mouthpiece for total clearage. Easy once ya get hang of it, effort is minimal at most. Its not like surfacing from a dive places you by default in a face-down position a high % of time, IME. Most snorlers look around, get bearings on where they are if notable distance travelled while underwater. and then go back to face-down position for more cruisin’ the area.
There was a method to overcome this that I was able to accomplish a few times. At depth when you are ready to ascend - head up and snorkel tip down, blow a short shot of air into it. As you come up that air (due to lower pressure) expands and displaces the water, break surface and tilt snorkel up, and it is already full of air, no need to blow.
I don’t know how the more modern ones would work with this.