As you said, you should swim diagonally or parallel to the shore when you’re in a rip current. In open water you don’t swim \strong,\ you swim in a way that you don’t tire yourself out. This means you don’t kick except to keep your body aligned. You recover your arms with your deltoids and not you small muscles. You \rest\ on every single stroke, by not stroking until your other arm returns (a sort of aborted \catch-up\ style). You keep your head down and only sight forward on every third stroke or so, keeping your head down even when sighting, which means in choppy water you may only see beyond the waves every 9 or 12 strokes. You swim like this and realize you may be in the water for 20 minutes or more. Which if you actually are a \strong swimmer\ is not a problem.

Very glad to see that your well told story ended well! It took me back to when I was 18 and went to live in Australia for a couple of years. Being from the Midwest, I knew nothing of the ocean. I decided I wanted to learn to surf, so after being in Sydney for a few days I went to Bondai Beach and bought a used surfboard at a beach side shop. Seeing that I was a Yank who didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a first board just to learn on, the clerk took the opportunity to offload a leaky junk “surfboard”. It was a dark stormy day and there were no other surfers at the beach. If I hadn’t been such a clueless newbie that would have scared me off, but I thought it was good as I would not have an audience of locals to witness my ineptitude. Before I knew what was happening, I was about a quarter of a mile off shore on a waterlogged surfboard that was barely keeping me afloat. The water was a very ugly and scary gray black and very choppy; almost washing me off of the board. I was exhausted and my arms were so sore I could barely move them. A couple of lifeguards appeared on the beach, and their tiny far away bodies were waving at me frantically (they told me later that they were afraid to come after me). I seriously thought that I was going to die. I finally made it back to shore by paddling in the direction that the lifeguards were waving me to. They were pretty mad at me, but when they realized that I was an American they just shrugged and rolled their eyes.

That was my last time on a surfboard, but I body surfed my way along Aussie’s eastern coast and throughout SE Asia. I did have to be rescued once more in Australia while body surfing in pretty large punishing waves. After that I finally learned the lesson: When in trouble in the ocean, the first thing to do is – Don’t Panic! Take a deep breath (hopefully of air), calm down, and assess the situation. Think about what you have to do and then do it. After I finally learned this I was ok even when I was being rolled along the bottom and ground into the sand by large waves.