>>510992110I grew up in a beach town, had swimming lessons every summer as kid, worked as a lifeguard, surfed and swam in the ocean all of my life. I am an extremely experienced, very good swimmer and very familiar with all of the weird local flows around and between tidal inlets, sandbars, et.
There have been several times when even I've been pulled into a rip tide and got pulled out very far before being able to get out of it and swim back. Would be an extremely dangerous situation for a less experienced swimmer, especially if they didn't know to swim perpendicular to the current instead of trying to swim directly back toward the beach.