My Swimming Trunks Have Been Sucked Off !link! Jun 2026

"I was in the shallow end, just chatting," recalls Michael, 34, a victim of a hotel pool drain in Tenerife. "I felt the pull, I panicked, I kicked away, and suddenly I was free. Free in every sense of the word. My trunks were just stuck there, waving at me from the bottom of the pool like a surrender flag."

Lycra and polyester blends (the cheap ones) are mesh-like on a microscopic level. Water jets through them easily, but the drag coefficient of a loose pair of board shorts is massive. The drain doesn’t suck the water —it sucks the volume of the shorts. Think of a parachute being dragged through a porthole. My Swimming Trunks Have Been Sucked Off

If your waistband is loose (more than two fingers of slack), you are wearing a sail. When the water pulls the back of your shorts, the front acts like a lever, peeling the waistband over your hips in 0.3 seconds. "I was in the shallow end, just chatting,"

While it's impossible to completely eliminate the risk, here are some tips to minimize the chances of your swimwear getting sucked off: My trunks were just stuck there, waving at

This is a common physical mishap where the high-pressure suction from pool or hot tub drains/jets physically pulls at loose fabric. In popular culture, this was famously depicted in the Big City Greens

The Great Escape