‘You don’t know what the water is like’: What are the risks facing Irish holiday swimmers abroad?

Grainne Cunningham and her friends are usually in the sea by 6.45am. The Kerry woman counts the south Dublin swimming spots, the Forty Foot, Vico and Seapoint, among her favourites.

“In the winter we swim in the dark … We use lights and we stay close together. It is all about knowing the people you are with,” she says.

Not only does the solicitor and former journalist brave the waters all year round, but she has done too many triathlons to recall, including no less than three Ironmans. One of these endurance tests – a 3.8km swim, followed by a 180k cycle, rounded off by running a marathon – she did in Spain in temperatures of 40 degrees, which even she admits was maybe pushing it a bit.

Yet on a recent kayaking holiday in Croatia, she was careful to check with locals before entering the water to see if there were likely to be any surprises in store or anything she should know about the sea conditions.

“If you are swimming abroad, you don’t know what the water is like and you need to ask,” she says.

“You can look at the sea and it seems perfectly benign. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t currents or rocks or weeds that will throw you if you get caught in them”.

Even experienced sea swimmers such as Cunningham, she believes, need to tread carefully especially on foreign holidays in unfamiliar territory and have no way of anticipating hidden dangers such as rip currents or sudden drops in the seabed.

Regular sea swimming in familiar spots in Ireland does not guarantee safe swimming in unknown waters off popular holiday destinations. Statistics of Irish deaths abroad should urge caution.

Since January 2019, some 51 people have died by drowning while abroad. Figures collected by Water Safety Ireland (WSI) show that 10 died in 2019, two in 2020 (when the Covid-19 pandemic halted foreign travel), seven in 2021, 15 in 2022 and 11 in 2023.

So far this year six Irish people have drowned while out of the country, including a man in his 70s in the southeast of Spain on Monday and a 57-year-old who went into cardiac arrest while swimming at the Benagil Sea Cave near the popular resort of Lagoa in Portugal at the end of last month.

“And we haven’t had a summer yet,” says Roger Sweeney, deputy chief executive of WSI.

Most Irish drownings abroad since 2019 (15) occurred in Spain, while seven were in the UK and the rest occurred in Australia, Greece, Portugal and France.

More than 80 per cent – or 41 of the 51 who drowned while abroad – were men, in line with the trend at home where an average of 118 drownings occurred in each of five years to 2021.

Sweeney and international surfer Neil Byrne from Strandhill, Co Sligo first point to rip currents – a body of water that flows out to sea – when asked what Irish people should be wary of when swimming abroad on holiday.

“As surfers we have a trained eye and the first thing we always look out for is the rips,” says Byrne, who has represented Ireland in world surfing championships around the globe.

“The problem is the rip is always the calmest area on the beach. It is deceiving. The waves don’t break as powerfully in the rips and then people think: ‘This is a calm area. I will jump in here.’ But a lot of the time you are jumping into the rip.”

Sweeney says he has a picture in his mind of an Irish family arriving at a foreign beach, charmed by the pristine water and unaware that hidden dangers are lurking under the apparently gentle waves.

“People arriving at these lovely holiday scenes can be lulled into a false sense of security,” he said. “They see waves, created by an elevated sandbank, but when that water needs to go back out, it carves a little channel, about the width of a road, and then that channel of water goes back out, and that is the rip current.

“That rip will take an Olympian swimmer out. It doesn’t pull you under the water – it pulls you out.”

Byrne, who has been involved in dozens of rescues at Strandhill, a surfing beach deemed unsafe for bathing, says the big mistake people make when they enter the rips is that they panic. That burns up energy.

“They start trying to swim against it. That is like trying to swim against a river. You should swim at a 45-degree angle to the shoreline to get out of the rip,” he says.

While acknowledging that it is “easier said than done” to get out of a rip, he says it is important to keep a calm head whether you are struggling in a rip or flailing about after being taken unaware by a sudden four foot drop in the seabed.

“The key thing is to stay afloat until you are spotted by lying on your back, and trying to get attention,” he says.

Sweeney says in order to avoid tragedy while abroad, a few common sense measures need to be taken such swimming in a life-guarded waterway, obeying the lifeguard flags, never swimming alone and ensuring there is “constant, uninterrupted adult supervision of children”, with no breaks even for a five-minute trip to get ice creams or chips.

“There is a risk that people will let their guard down while abroad,” he says.

“Often there is a sense of bravado that comes with holidays. People tend to take risks and encourage others to take risks. They can encourage others to overestimate their ability, especially after exams”.

With alcohol a factor in 30 per cent of domestic drownings, he said this risk may be heightened while abroad “especially in hot weather, when people tend to have a drink in the afternoon”.

“And then they may go for a swim and get into difficulty,” he says.

Anything that dulls the antennae for danger is unwise, he says. “People drown for two reasons: they overestimate their ability and they underestimate the risks.”

Cunningham agrees that on holidays people’s natural inhibitions are lowered.

“I am not even talking about drink. I am talking about exuberance,” she said, noting that some people who never typically enter the sea at home will do so if they are abroad.

Even experienced sea swimmers need to be careful when overseas, she says.

“I have heard loads of conversations down at the Forty Foot with experienced swimmers saying that out of the blue they got into trouble, maybe because of a rip tide or a current they did not anticipate. People drown all the time when they have been swimming for years,” she says.

A drowning on a holiday abroad is heartbreaking, she knows. “It is so awful because nearly always these accidents happen in front of family members,” she says.