[Inconel]

I'm going to preface this by mentioning that I swam competitively starting at around age 6 through high school, was both a life guard and swim instructor at UCSF's rec center during high school, tend to be an overly cautious person, have had to pull a lifeless body from the ocean before, and have witnessed too many near drownings to count.

With that out of the way, does anyone else think its a really bad idea to advise someone who in their own words is trying to develop their swimming skill to the "point of not drowning", to simply find some seemingly calm piece of open water and have at it? I think this is terrible advice. If you aren't comfortable in the water you shouldn't be going into any natural body of water unsupervised, no matter how calm it may appear.

I no longer live in the BA but you should be able to find a YMCA, community swimming pool, or your local community college, that will have adult swim classes for beginners at a very reasonable cost. A couple weeks of classes and you should be comfortable enough to where you most likely won't drown, keep in mind even excellent swimmers drown on occasion.

Once you have the basics down you can join a local Masters club if you want to get more serious. Please don't go practice at Ocean beach.