July 2018 (ROTM#115) Bulli Beach, Northern Illawarra, NSW, Australia

Probably the main piece of advice I give to people about ‘how to spot a rip’ is to look for dark gaps of water between areas of breaking waves. That’s because many rips occupy deep channels between shallow sandbars and deeper water is always darker and waves don’t break as much in deeper water. But of course it’s much easier said than done.

Look through most of the Rip of the Month pictures on this site and you’ll see most of them are taken from a perspective looking down at the beach. This is helpful if you are actually looking down at the beach…not so much if you are standing on the beach at the shoreline. It’s always harder to spot them from the shoreline.

 It recently occurred to me that one thing I always do to spot rips is to look down or up the beach  because it’s easier to see rips from the side. So here’s a big SOS RIP TIP – look sideways down the beach to spot rips. The narrow dark gaps seem to stand out better.

Here’s some pictures taken minutes apart from a beach near me.. The one on the left shows a dark gap between waves and the one on the right shows the same rip from the side just as I was entering the water…if you squint hard, you can see another one way down the beach. Which method do you think is easier?

Hard to see from the shoreline. Looking sideways helps.