Blame It On The Boogie Board

Ah, The Sea. It conjures up some great images.....The Guinness Surfer advert with the white horses...... the view from Brighton promenade...... the song La Mer...... that new Smirnoff TV ad..... scuba diving in the tropics...... Sydney Harbour...... the Isle Of Wight Ferry...... OK, maybe not the last one, but generally when you think of the sea, you get some pretty vivid pictures in your head.

Trouble is, there is a flip side to this. I found out last weekend, nearly to my cost, that The Sea is not to messed with.

About a year ago, I went down to North Cornwall with friends, one of whom has owned a holiday home down there since the 70's. Ostensibly it was a few days chilling out by the coast, but it turned into a kind of watery epiphany for me.

See, ever since I was young, I have had a fear of water. Now, by this I am not talking about bathing or showering; rather, I don't feel comfortable in (or on, or over) any body of water that is bigger than my bath tub. Consequently, I have never been a good swimmer. To be fair, I have tried swimming lessons, but not to any great degree of success. If I was ever to appear on Room 101, deep water would be my second item in (after wasps).

Going back to a year ago in Cornwall - my friends were insistent that I donned a borrowed wetsuit, and tried out Body boarding (a watered-down version of surfing, excuse the pun) on Harlyn Beach. Surprisingly, I found it great fun, but didn't catch any waves. The following day we tried nearby Constantine Bay, which had choppier water, and I absolutely loved it, catching some great waves in the process. I could now enjoy the buzz of surfing without having to swim further out to sea. All in the relative safety of water shallow enough for me to touch the sea floor, under the watchful eye of the RNLI Lifeguards. I even learned stuff about swimming between the safety flags to avoid things like 'breaks'.

One year on, I returned to the Cornish coast for a Stag Do. This time, I meant business - armed with my own wetsuit & body board, I felt like a seasoned veteran as we returned to Constantine. On Friday & Saturday the stags pissed about in the sea on boogie boards, like (as my friend put it so well) kids in a sweet shop. We planned to return there early on Sunday morning.

You can probably tell at this stage, that I was getting a little bit over-confident. I should have spotted the warning signs: my mate (the stag) dislocating his shoulder in the same bay whilst canoe-surfing the previous year, the Warning: Dangerous Currents sign that greets you as you enter Constantine beach, and the fact that I had was still a crap swimmer, despite my improved confidence in water.

On the Sunday morning, the tide was a lot further out than usual, and as the whole stag party joined other body boarders a 100 yards into the water, some of us suddenly were pulled out over a shelf on the sea bed. At the time I wasn't immediately concerned, I just used my board as a float and kicked my legs to try to reach shallow water. It was only when I realised that the strong currents were actually dragging us further away from the beach, that I began to panic. What really freaked me out was how quiet the sea was. Of course, I have since learnt that the thing to do in such circumstances is to throw the board to one side (or use the cord to tie it to your leg), and swim to cut through the water. Being a non swimmer, this wasn't an option for me :-)

So, a big thank you is in order to people (you know who you are) who calmed me down and stayed with me/pulled me to safety. I do know that if I had been the only person in the water it might have been a tricky situation for me. I wasn't the only one to be caught out - the lifeguards fished out a couple of other members of the stag party, including the stag who dislocated his shoulder again trying to help out his brother in law. But all's well that end's well.

It's now my intention to learn how to swim properly before the next time I venture out on my board. I haven't been put off - I was back in the water on Sunday morning & later in the afternoon - but I'm determined not to get caught out like that again.

I will end this post by giving a big thumbs up to the RNLI lifeguards. Yes, a lot of them are tanned poseurs who sleep with more than their fair share of women, but they do a great job. It is scandalous the lack of Government funding that the RNLI gets - they rely almost entirely on voluntary donations & legacies. If you wish to support them, or find out more about them, please visit their website at http://www.rnli.org.uk/