Your Bad Beach Stories

In My Humble Opinion
1

When I was little I was in the water near the shoreline, “walking” on my hands while my feet floated out behind me. My sister and my cousin came up from behind me and each grabbed a leg and pulled. They thought this was extremely funny. Only problem was when they pulled my legs backwards, my arms, which had been busy supporting my upper body at the time, were pulled out from under me. Down I went with my face completely submerged and the more I kicked, the more they pulled me back deeper into the water. This led to a distinct lack of oxygen that I didn’t find amusing at all. Obviously, since I’m posting this, they did let go before I drowned but it remains one of the most frightening moments of my life. And the worst part is they didn’t even get in that much trouble even though I told my mom that they’d almost drowned me. Oh sure, just because I was the baby and would occassionally exagerate the extent of a sibling-inflicted injury…I mean they did try to strangle me several (hundred) times and my arm really *was * almost broken on several (thousand) occasions.
But this time they really and truly did almost do me in.

I’ve also gotten stung by a jelly fish and almost got taken out in an undertow. (Although that time my siblings were the ones who saved me.)
So what are your bad beach s
tories?

2

My, what an interesting typo…and there it will stay for all to see.
It was probably just that old almost broken arm injury kicking up again.

3

I came very close to drowning, along with my sister. First marriage, honeymoon in Cancun…bystanders had to pull us out.

We’re heading off to Cozumel in a few weeks, and I will make damn sure my 2 boys don’t get more than one foot of the beach. I know the under-currents are deadly.

Not to mention the sea creatures that wash up on shore. :smiley:

4

I had to be rescued by lifeguards when I was 13. It was my first time swimming in the ocean after moving from Chicago to San Diego and I had no idea what a rip current was. I just tried to swim straight in rather than going around it. I was so embarassed I never told anyone in my family what happened (they didn’t see any of it).

5

Honestly, I don’t have very many good beach stories. Not to say that near-disaster befalls me every time I go to the beach; I just don’t like it much. The heat, the sand, the incredible frizziness of my hair when exposed to the salt water.

Yesterday, I was walking by the beach on the way to a friend’s house and I saw 2 boys on the sand. One was lying face-down and the other had a soda bottle full of sand and he was pouring it in the first boy’s swimsuit—basically giving him an assload of sand. I really hope they weren’t walking home.

6

I once got caught in a rip and had to be rescued by the lifesavers in their inflatable boat. So what, you say. Thousands of such rescues occur a week. Well I was actually training to be a lifesaver at the time, so the whole incident proved to be rather embarassing.

I stay away from the beach these days.

7

I was once standing in the sea and my friend did a wee right next to me. It was very warm. THAT is a bad beach story.

8

The worst thing that ever happened to me was having a wave break right on the back of my neck. It felt like someone had hit me with a 2 x 4.

Worst thing that ever happened to a childhood playmate:

A jellyfish.

Inside the bathing suit.

Of a boy.

:eek:

9

Many years ago, I took a road trip to Galveston with a couple of buddies. We drove all day, and as soon as we got there, I jumped out of the car, ran into the water… and within SECONDS was hit by a large jellyfish/man-o-war/whatever that scarred the entire right side of my body from my neck to my foot (except for where the bathing suit was fortunately protecting me), stung with a pain like nothing I’d felt before or since, and kept me out of the water for the rest of the weekend.

However, every other time at the beach has been great!

10

There’s another beach story that I’ll leave to another Doper to tell, if he will. My part in it was minor.

However, I remember paddling along a reef on Maui, enjoying the sight of the neon-colored fish. I had flippers and a snorkel mask, so I wasn’t really watching where I was going. After a time I decided I was tired, and looked back toward shore, preparing to swim back, when I realized I was about five times further out to sea than I’d figured. About that time I realized I was completely exhausted, and waves were breaking over my back, and I was too panicked to lay flat on my face and just breathe through the snorkel. I kept folding up, trying to tread water, and I continued to get more tired, with a snorkel in my mouth so I couldn’t shout out for help.

It occurred to me, fortunately, that there were places where I could stand on the reef in my flipperfeet, which was sufficient for me to catch my breath.

FISH

11

Those jelly fish stings are incredibly painful. I had just stepped on soemthing that bit me and was heading back to shore when I walked right into the tentacle (that I don’t think was even attached to the jelly fish). I had on a bikini (many, many years ago) and the thing whipped across my stomache and left a huge welt line. Stung like crazy. This was in Italy and I’d never come across such a thing before.
It was the same beach with the undertow as well, and I remember thinking to myself (after repeated warnings from my parents), oh it can’t be that bad. Uh huh. It’s a very weird feeling being pulled out by the water.
lorene, the salt water in my hair thing really gets to me, too. My hair is bad enough as it is.
ivylass, ouch :eek:
fizzyJust how close was the friend? :smiley:

12

Am I misreading this, or are you saying your sister came with you on your honeymoon?

My worst swimming related incident was in a pond. Does that count? Well, I’ll plug it in and see if it sparks. When I was about 14, we went on vacation to a place that was on a pond. I was a good swimmer, at the time, but had just acquired my first mask and snorkel. Unfortunately, I had not acquired any information on proper use of said items.

So, one day, I decided to see what was on the bottom of the pond. This being on Cape Cod, the pond was of the Kettle-hole variety; not very large, but fairly deep. So, not knowing any better, I did a jackknife surface dive, and down I went. And down…and down…you get the idea. At some point, I realized my head was starting to hurt. But, by then I could see the bottom, and being a stubborn son-of-a-fish, decided to see if I could press on and reach the bottom. Nope. The pain got to be too much, and I surfaced. I’m not sure what I did to them, but my sinuses have been making me pay for that stupid move, ever since.

I had my first sinus headache, that evening, during which I was actively wishing my head would just explode, and get it over with. Throbbing, nausea, shooting lights, the works. And, I’ve been prone to them, since that day, though, mercifully, they’re usually not so intense. My mother, it turned out, knew all about the need to equalize the pressure as one descends, but hadn’t thought to tell me. :rolleyes:

I might’ve had a worse story to tell, relating to surfing in Hawaii (Maui? Kauai?), if I hadn’t decided that discretion was the better part of valor. I’ve never surfed, and the locals were getting their butts slammed by those waves.

I’ve only actually experienced one riptide. (I take those signs seriously!) It must have been a pretty wimpy one, though, because it didn’t pull me under. It just pulled me out about a hundred yards from shore, then faded. In retrospect, I suppose it was foolish to keep going back and doing it again. The tide could have shifted to something more dangerous. But, I thought it was cool. A natural water park ride!

13

Let’s see:

Snorkeling in Jamaica - got stuck in a swarm of jellyfish. Nice.

Snorkeling off the coast of Maui in about 200 feet deep water - feeding the fish frozen peas. Ran out of peas and one of the s.o.b.'s bit my finger hard enough to bring blood. Can you say sharks can smell one drop of blood up to a mile away? I booked back to shore!

Riptide when I was 12 (I’m now a certified lifeguard, so I’ve faced this fear) and a lifeguard on a private beach had to talk me back in with a megaphone.

I’m sure I’ll think of more. :smiley:

14

[sub]Your Bad Beach Stories[/sub]

The time my sister walked up on me and one of her female friends at their ninth grade beach party. :eek: She almost spoiled the moment.

15

I was getting out of the water, and my boobs came out of my top.
But whatever, it wasn’t humiliating or anything, it’s just that I go to the beach so rarely that this is actually my worst story.

16

I cant swim, but one day when I was about 16, me and two other friends went to the beach for the day. Ive no problem getting in the water so i was in it about up to my chest level say, and anyway were mesing about n stuff and I dunno how it happened because its a flat beach and it doesnt have shelves or anything, but one minute im standing there, the next minute theres waves crashing over my head and im drinking sea water by the buckey load while standing on my tippy toes trying to get back to shore…
scared the shite outta me… my friends didnt even notice what was happening :rolleyes:

More recently, though not at the beach, it was in a Waterpark in Gran Canaria. So me and another girl went along for the day while on holiday, anyway like I said, I cant swim, but hey I love all those mad rides and shit, so I go along. Anyway cant remember what it was called but basically it was one of those almost vertical slides into a water pit, so I actually checked with the lifeguard and said: I cant swim, is it okay to go on this. She said yes id be fine, so I went onit. She lied. Scared the crap out of me. Got into the pit and am thrashing about the place the life guards come runing over to me… and then they stand there watching…Idiots… and Me for getting on the thing in the first place…

Anyway, way to long, soz.

17

My worst beach story?

A couple of years ago, CG and I take a little vacation down to Corpus to visit my stepsister and her husband and go to the beach. While at the beach, I got this bright idea to make an anatomically correct mermaid sand sculpture. I worked on it FOREVER while CG, stepsister and her hubby got comfortably alcoholized and baked a bit in the sun. I finish my mermaid and they all giggle and smile, pointing at the nipples I’d put on her (made out of seashells t hat were thin and pointy, which I’d stuck sticking straight up out of her massive boobage).

That’s when a mother and her two kids (5 and 9 I guess) walk by and she attempts to cover their eyes. I also noticed that the boys were wearing “holy” boardshorts…that is to say, they had crucifixes on them and mom was wearing the most decent of one-pieces I’d seen in a long, long time.

Boy did I feel embarrassed.

IDBB

18

I left quite a bit of skin on some lava rocks on the Big Island of Hawaii, but my favorite beach related disaster occured on the mainland when I was about 15. I was surfing with some friends at Huntington Beach and it was decided that someone had to go for beer. Somehow I was elected. Nevermind that I was too young to buy the beer or for that matter too young to drive the woody the ten or so miles to get the beer from the guy who would sell it to a 15 year old.

So I was off, trying to get used to a stick shift that I was unfamiliar with and that was very questionable in second gear. I picked up the beer loaded it into the back of the woody nice and level in the back.

First, it should be remembered that this was in the early '60s, the very infancy of pop-top beer cans. It was also in the summer, a hot summer at that, also old woodies were not known for great shocks or springs, and traffic along 101 in those days along that two lane was very slow subject to many stops so the 10 miles or so ended up taking around 45 minutes, long enough for the cans of beer to get very hot in the non-airconditioned vehicle.

Anyway, as I was stuck in a traffic jam trying to figure out how to shift down to second, I hear a “poosh” sound, and then another “poosh” and another and another. Then I find it is raining beer inside the woody. Yes, the newly invented pop-top cans were popping their tops with no more help than the heat that had built up the pressure in the cans and they were showering me with beer. I was getting drenched with the contents and I was getting a bit high from the fumes. To this day I do not know how I reached the beach I was going to or avoided running over any number of cops directing traffic. I imagine that vehicle smelled like a mobile brewery. I do remember I was wiping off the beer=coated windshield from the inside for the last quarter of the trip.

I definitely was dreading getting picked up by the police. Imagine a 15 year-old kid soaked in beer in a car that wasn’t his in a clearly confused condition. (“All right boys and girls can we say ‘jail time?’”)

The kicker was that when I finally did get back to the beach, the other surfers were very upset with me that so little beer made it back to them.

TV

19

I took my son to a beach in San Diego. He was about 18 months old and took great delight in collecting some of the items that were washing up on the beach. When it was time to leave he wanted to take his new collection with him to show his mother. His mother and I had recently separated. When we returned to her apartment, he ran up to his mother to show him his new collection. She had a funny look on her face and asked me why I would let our son collect tampon applicators. I don’t use tampons and had no idea what tampon applicators looked like.

It seems that the sewage systems in the Mexican cities just south of the border dump raw sewage straight into the Pacific. And Mexican women, instead of throwing the applicators in the trash flush them instead. Currents generally flow south but on occasions the currents will flow north depositing the things that float on the beaches of Southern California.

20

Hey racer72, a similar thing happened to me in Cornwall in 2001! There I was with my partner, thoroughly enjoying my first swim in the sea for at least fifteen years. Suddenly I notice not one, but two square white things floating alongside. I call over to my partner who correctly identifies them as used sanitary towels, which put a sudden and absolute end to my swimming in the seas around Britain ever again.

I swear, if I ever actually meet any of the goons who permit this stuff to be flushed out into the sea, unfiltered and untreated, free to float along to beaches where thousands bathe, I will get very violent indeed.

It’s all just one more triumph of capitalism, I guess; no doubt the sewage companies couldn’t ‘compete’ if they were required to do anything more responsible than simply fill the sea with crap.