April 2013 (ROTM#52) Stanwell Park, NSW, Australia

The March 2013 Rip of the Month showed a pretty typical picture of breaking waves along a beach and asked the question ‘Are there any rips in this picture’. Well, the answer is ‘No’.  If you look closely you might see a bit of a dark gap through the breaking waves towards the left of the photo, but this is just some inconsistent wave breaking. One of the problems with using still images to educate people about how to spot rips is that not all rips are obvious. Most of the time you need to spend a few minutes watching the surf looking for dark gaps that keep appearing in the same place.  That’s why movies of rips and talking to lifeguards at the beach are more effective.

Also, while some beaches are known for rips, they are not always there. It really depends on the configurations of sand bars and channels, which often change almost constantly. However, there is a rip current in this picture and it should be pretty obvious. It’s a massive rip taken during some big swell at Stanwell Park, just south of the Royal National Park in Sydney. That big green gap between breaking waves is hard to miss. It may look big and nasty, but often we find that wide rips don’t actually flow as fast as narrow rips that are squeezed between sand bars. So in that respect they’re not as dangerous, but as they’re bigger, they are also easier to get into in the first place.

Big, but not necessarily bad.