Cercate due persone in navigazione al largo della spiaggia del Devon

Another badly constructed headline.

Took me 3 reads to parse it. The sentence makes sense, but is insanely ambiguous.

‘Search under way for two people in sea near Devon beach’ – How I would put it.

I was isolating ‘under’ as the preposition, and then treating ‘way off beach’ as adjective and noun (or possibly an uncapitalised proper noun). Naturally I was confused at how people can end up *under* a beach, whether the beach is way off, or whether it’s just Way Off Beach. I was a way off b****, though.

‘Off’ in the headline’s sense makes sense, but couple with ‘way’ it creates ambiguity, as described above. ‘In sea near’ eliminates that entirely.

And people said the RNLI, and Health and Safety was going mad about the sea swim today and Boxing day.
Exmouth was manic this morning!

Those waters are not to be taken lightly, they nearly claimed my Dad when he was a kid and then 30 odd years later nearly got me too. We’re both really strong swimmers and never had a problem anywhere else. The sea is angry around cornwall and devon, it should be treated with respect.

Several swims were cancelled due to weather… The coastguard and emergency services said don’t swim… They go swimming… I’m sympathetic up to a point. This is just natural selection.