Williams also suggests that all PWC operators take a safe boating or watercraft course. As a boater, you'll need to know some things about yourself, your craft, others on the water, and what is expected of you. Under certain conditions, rip currents can be the most dangerous natural hazard on the beach. They can pull even the most experienced swimmers away from shore and are to blame for many beach drownings each year. Rip currents occur when waves break on offshore sandbars, says Spencer Rogers, North Carolina Sea Grant's Coastal Construction and Erosion Specialist.
Water falls between the beach and the bar and becomes trapped.
As the water piles up, it seeks the lowest spot on the bar to return seaward, which it usually finds in a hole or break in the bar. The water flows quickly through the break in the bar, creating a fast current that typically flows 100-200 feet before dissipating. Rip currents can vary from place to place and day to day, but they are usually worse at specific tide elevations and are most persistent around natural features such as rock outcroppings or man-made features such as jetties, groins or piers. The problem comes when waves, water levels, and bar features combine to make the rip current faster. Swimmers should learn to identify signs of rip currents such as water moving through the breakers and offshore, waves breaking either closer to shore due to deeper waters in the sandbar break or farther offshore due to the currents, differences in water color caused by turbulence from the breaking waves, and choppier water on both sides of the sandbar.