Rip Tides Make for Hazardous Summer at East Hampton Beaches

East Hampton Village lifeguards had already made more saves by the end of July at the ocean beaches they patrol than they did all of last summer, as rip currents and crowded beaches have spiked the numbers of swimmers finding themselves in distress or in dangerous predicaments.

Village lifeguards already had made more than 200 “saves” — meaning a lifeguard assessed that a swimmer was in distress and dashed from their stand into the water — by the end of the last weekend in July, according to Drew Smith, the village’s beach manager and chief lifeguard.

Smith attributed the high number of saves to regular rip currents — a flow of water that pushes rapidly out from the shoreline beyond the surf line — and crowds of swimmers often inexperienced with swimming in the ocean.

The rip currents this year have been consistent, strong and somewhat difficult to spot, Smith said, and have formed despite surf conditions that can appear relatively benign.

“We’ve definitely had an unusually high number of rip currents this year, but we haven’t had a lot of really large waves, which people get the message about and they don’t go in,” Smith said. “We’ve been getting a lot of ground swell of 3 to 4 feet, which looks more welcoming, but is still capable of generating a strong rip currents.”

The busy summer for village lifeguards may also be attributable to beaches that are more crowded than ever.

While parking has long been the main limiting factor for the number of people who will come to a beach, Uber rides and e-bikes have changed the equation for many people considering a day at the ocean beaches — especially visitors who are unfamiliar with the dynamics of the South Fork’s surf — Smith said.

“It’s more people than we’ve ever seen,” the veteran local lifeguard and former FDNY medical technician who took over as beach manager in 2022 said.

East Hampton Village has three lifeguard protected beaches — Georgica, Main Beach and Two Mile Hollow — and a long stretch of beach between each that its lifeguards regularly respond to for calls of swimmers in distress.

The use of drones and Jet Skis have aided the lifeguards’ ability to both monitor surf conditions and swimmers, as well as make rescues far from lifeguard stands, but Smith said that the key message for beachgoers is to not go into the water at beaches that are not lifeguard protected.

“A regular person at the beach doesn’t usually have the trained eye to spot a rip current, and if you go in the water at an unprotected bathing area, you can get in trouble very quick,” said John Ryan Jr., chief of East Hampton Town’s 120 lifeguards.

“Last week, I saw a 2-ton log, 6 feet at the base and 20 feet long, getting washed up and down the berm and moving down the beach, and when it got to spot about 50 feet from where we were training, there was a rip current,” he recalled. “That log got sucked out through the breakers like it had a motor on it.

“Can you imagine what that does to a 180-pound person, or a 70-pound kid? They turn from a swimmer into a nonswimmer.”

Ryan said that the town’s lifeguards have not experienced the overall spike in rescues this summer that the village has, but is on pace again this year with last year’s extremely busy summer.

“We’ve had red or yellow flag for most of the last couple of weeks, and when it’s a yellow flag, it’s almost more dangerous than a red flag,” Ryan said. “People are more inclined to go in. But the rip currents are still very strong.”

Rip currents can be deceptive, too, because the outflowing water often knocks down the surf where it pushes offshore, making it appear to the unsuspecting eye like a good place to enter the water because the breakers are not as big.

Ryan said that an area of cloudy or discolored water, when the surrounding water is a deeper green or blue, is a sure sign of a rip current and something beachgoers should try to assess before going in the water — which isn’t always easy.

Lifeguards from both agencies have been using drones in recent years to get an eagle-eye view of the waters just beyond the breakers, looking for both the signs of rip tides and of sharks or the baitfish schools that attract them.

Ryan said that beachgoers should avoid swimming late in the day during summer, when southwest winds tend to kick up in the afternoons and can exacerbate rip current effects.

Most of all, both lifeguard chiefs said, beachgoers should simply not swim when lifeguards — who will know where a rip current has formed and be watching closely — are not nearby.

A 31-year-old man drowned at Ditch Plains last summer after getting caught in a rip current when he went swimming at the notoriously rip current-prone beach after lifeguards had gone off duty for the day. Three off-duty town lifeguards were surfing nearby but were unable to reach him in time.

There have been no drowning fatalities at local beaches this summer — in no small part thanks to lifeguards who have come to the rescue of swimmers in distress, the lifeguard bosses said.

Ryan said that just this week, he received an email from a man, a strong swimmer, who had gone for a swim on a beautiful summer day, and had been caught in rip current and had been rescued by town lifeguards.

The man said that when he’d been caught in the current, being sucked offshore, he had begun to panic. Thoughts of his family having to come to a hospital to find him dead overwhelmed his mind. Instead, he wrote, he had dinner with them that night — thanks to the lifeguards who came to his aid.

“Those lifeguards don’t realize the impact they have,” Ryan said, reading from the thank you noted the man had sent. “Because, if not for them, I would not be here.”