NAVARRE BEACH - The white sand just went on for miles
After almost 3 days off torrential rain and thunderstorms, tornado watches and flash flood warnings, the sun came out this afternoon and it felt fantastic! Being cooped up in the trailer during all that wasn’t really our idea of fun but hey, it’s all part of the journey I guess! Thank god the tornadoes missed our trailer park!
So since it was nice out we decided to take a quick drive down to the coast and check out Navarre Beach. It was really, windy and they had a red flag up to warn people about the dangerous undercurrent and rip tides. The water was too cold to swim in anyways.
As we’re walking down the boardwalk (they do a great job of putting these up to access the beach) Dave is commenting on how big the waves are and how much fun it would be surf or body surf. We’re literally on the beach for about 5 minutes and we notice 2 guys, pretty far out in the waves. Hard to tell if they were OK or not but everyone on shore was watching them. Then a local couple came over and asked us if we thought they were OK, guess his wife thought she heard someone cry help. Then as we were standing there, two lifeguards from further up the beach pulled up in their beach cart and jump in the water to rescue them. Just like on Baywatch!
It took them a while to get out there because the waves were big and it looked like the swimmers were caught in the rip tide. The locals that we were talking to said they never see waves like that unless it’s after a hurricane.....goes to show you how nasty the most recent weather was around here.
Anyways, the one life guard pulls in the one guy fairly quickly but the other one is having a tough time with the remaining swimmer. The other life guard goes back into help him and eventually they get out of the rip tide into more “normal” undertow and it takes the two of them to help the guy to the beach. He could barely walk and he collapsed on the beach. He must have by hypothermic because people were rubbing his arms and legs etc and telling him to stay awake. He must of been freezing and exhausted. By this time the sheriff was there and Fire emergency rescue.
We walked down to the more populated part of the beach where the life guards were stationed and they were getting all the kids out of the water after that. We heard the one guard telling 3 little boys that they he didn’t want them in there because they had just rescued a guy and he had been taken to the hospital. I’d be willing to be it was to treat hypothermia.
So quite the eventful first day on the beach, never expected to see that and very glad no one died. Gotta respect the red warning flags around here that’s for sure!
Got a few pics of the rescue and the beach that you might be interested in the ALBUM.