First OWS and I'm still alive

Took my 11 month old son to the beach yesterday, with my wife, for his first time ever with the intent of getting myself in the water and putting in some time seeing if I can actually swim while he was splashing around.  Being a giant rock (6'6" 250#) I was fearing the worst but once I got in the water it wasn't as miserable as I thought it'd be.  I'm taking it slow with just a sprint Tri in September and trying to train correctly leading up to it and then get more aggresive during the winter and into next year and do multiple races.  I just swam out a bit, then took off to the left and ended up passing by groups of people throwing a football around or whatever and when I looked up I was about 3/4 of the way towards the next lifeguard tower from where I started which was a whole lot better than I first assumed.  On my way back I definitely took a few gulps of sea water and had to stop a bit, but all in all I was pretty happy with my swimming. 

Luckily my wife's best friend is a swim instructor so she'll hopefully be able to give me some pointers on breathing and my general form, which I'm sure is pretty bad.  Long ways to go but getting in the water that first time was definitely the hardest part.  There are some great threads on here too about swimming which definitely helped me out.