The Rip Current at Cocoa Beach

Every summer along Florida's Atlantic coast, lifeguards respond to the same tragic scene. A swimmer gets caught in a rip current — that narrow, powerful channel of water rushing straight out to sea — and panics. They turn toward shore and swim with everything they have. Arms churning, lungs burning, they fight the current stroke by stroke. Some of them drown, not because they lacked strength, but because they spent every ounce of it fighting in the wrong direction.…