Swimming to Antarctica (14 page)

That was exactly what my parents wanted me to do. That was what Fahmy urged me to do, and Stockwell and Johnson, and the entire crew. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to hang up my swimsuit forever. I had had enough.

During the next week they worked on me. My folks said that I was in great shape and I had a great chance to break the record—why would I pass all that up? Fahmy called me and met with me a handful of times and told me that I really needed to go back again, that I was mentally tough, and that if I didn’t go back now, I would wonder all my life what I could have done. Stockwell and Johnson called to say they would go with me again, that they hadn’t been able to fulfill their promise to me. Montrella also encouraged me. He said that he knew I could make the swim. I was more prepared than ever before.

There had been things about swimming from Catalina Island to the mainland that had bothered me. One major concern was my brother’s world record: I didn’t really want to break it. I knew how hard he had worked for it, and I knew how I felt when I had my English Channel record broken. I also wasn’t excited about having to cross the Catalina Channel again and then swim the distance we had just covered. So I discussed this with my parents and the crew and we decided that I would start at Point Vicente, near San Pedro.

Two weeks after my initial attempt, we set out. The night was perfectly calm, and the sky was filled with stars. We moved quickly offshore, and I broke through the current easily. My pace was a little faster than two and a half miles per hour. The two weeks of tapering had revived me, and I felt very strong. But something happened about halfway across the channel; I lost all motivation and bottomed out. John Sonnichsen, who had been on my previous attempt and had been on other people’s swims, said it was due to low blood sugar, and that I needed to stop to drink some juice.

Calmly I told the crew, “I don’t want to do this.”

“We’ve talked all about this, sweet. I thought you worked through it. Come on, you can do it,” my father said.

“I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t care,” I said, taking off my goggles.

“You’re just going through a bad period right now. Put your goggles back on and keep swimming,” John Sonnichsen said, tossing me a red plastic bottle filled with apple juice. “You’ll feel better once you drink it,” he urged.

I started swimming again, but three more times, I had my doubts about what I was doing out there.

With the crew’s encouragement, however, I finally managed to pull my head together. After I’d been swimming for six hours, Sonnichsen told me that I was on record pace. And then it came back to me: I wanted to do this because I wanted to be good at something, and because I loved swimming. I loved being out on the open ocean with them, doing something so beautiful, risky, and tough.

I pulled harder, laughed, joked with the crew. The crossing took me eight hours and forty-eight minutes, and I broke the men’s and women’s world records. I thought it was so cool my brother had the record in the other direction! I had succeeded and failed, and I had learned things that would become valuable later in my life. And so I began dreaming again, looking for swims that had never been done before.

After five hours of swimming between the North and South Islands of New Zealand, across the mighty Cook Strait, I was farther from the finish than when we’d started. The weather was deteriorating; it had been ever since I’d entered the water, although the weather forecasters had promised winds that would only be light and variable, with no surf at all. They were wrong: the waves were four feet high, crashing headfirst into us; the wind was already up to fifteen knots, churning the strait into chop; and I was physically and mentally exhausted. I had made an enormous mistake. From the onset of the swim, I’d thought this twelve-mile swim would take five hours, at most, to complete.

Months before the channel crossing, I had spoken with Sandy Blewett, the swimmer from New Zealand I had met in Dover while preparing for the English Channel. I knew that one day she had wanted to swim Cook Strait and I knew it was her idea to be the first woman across. But she had attempted the English Channel and had had very poor conditions; she hadn’t been able to complete the swim. Phoning her, I’d asked her if she minded if I attempted the crossing before she had a go at it. She had no problem with that at all, and even offered to help. Sandy provided me with background information, and, based on my speed in the English Channel, I had thought Cook Strait would be a piece of cake.

For more than four hours, John Sonnichsen had been shouting at me, using a bullhorn pressed against his mouth. Sonnichsen had offered to come to New Zealand as my adviser. I was getting into new territory now, and in this case, I was attempting a swim that a dozen people had tried but only three men from New Zealand had completed. Because Sonnichsen had experience setting up swims in areas that had rarely been swum, figuring out tides and currents, my folks had agreed to pay him and to send him with me to help on the swim, and also to be my chaperon. By profession, Sonnichsen was a physical education teacher in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, and he had a wife and three daughters. He was a good guy, but that bullhorn was driving me crazy. He had been shouting at me all morning long. I wanted to tear that bullhorn out of his hands and throw it into the ocean.

Sonnichsen had just informed me that the tide had swept us back around the tip of the North Island and we had been steadily going backward for the past two hours. He hadn’t wanted to tell me because he’d thought I would be discouraged. Oh, he was right; I was.

When I looked up to breathe, to confirm what he had just told me, off to my right side was the North Island, and I could see our starting point, jutting out ahead of us by three or four miles. When I lifted my head straight up, to see where the South Island should have been, all I saw in the distance was haze, and a sea of waves and heavy winds. It was impossible to think of continuing through it; I was exhausted. So was the crew.

Accompanying me on paddleboards were lifeguards from the Island Bay Surf Lifesaving Club. They had been battling against the sea with me all morning long. And on the two boats ahead of us were Sam Moses, a journalist from
Sports Illustrated;
Keith Hancox, a radio announcer and one of the three men who had swum the strait; Sandy Blewett; John Cataldo, the head pilot; and his fishing crew. Some of the crew were getting seasick and were having difficulty standing without tumbling over.

For more than five hours,
I thought,
I’ve been swimming across Cook Strait and no one told me I’ve been going backward most of
this time?
It occurred to me that something might be wrong, but I had no idea how wrong.

Most of New Zealand knew what obstacles we would have to overcome; Keith Hancox had been broadcasting our progress—and lack of it—hourly over Radio Wellington, a local station on the North Island. More than anyone, Hancox knew what Cook Strait was all about. He knew how incredibly tough the crossing could be from a swimmer’s perspective, and he informed his listeners that I was really struggling. His listeners understood and related to it. Because Cook Strait separates the North and South Islands of New Zealand, most residents had crossed the strait by ferry.

New Zealanders knew how terribly rough Cook Strait could be, and they got caught up in the story. Every hour they stopped whatever they were doing for an update. They told Hancox over the ship’s radio that they were as caught up in listening to the broadcast as they had been the day Neil Armstrong had walked on the moon. It was as if, one by one, people lit a million candles. Throughout New Zealand people turned on their radios, and interest grew so quickly that Radio Wellington canceled its normal programming and went to live national coverage. News stations from around the world had their reporters tune in.

New Zealand was, after all, the land of Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb Mount Everest, and there was a certain national pride and character that was infused within them, too, a can-do attitude. People throughout the country began calling the boat. Mothers, fathers, sheep farmers, fishermen, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, bee farmers, people from the most remote farms and villages called. When I started getting really discouraged, the paddler had me swim close to the lead boat so Keith Hancox could tell me what was happening. He was elated. “A Girl Scout just called in from Nelson. She said to tell you to keep going; she thinks you will make it. A farmer called a minute ago from Christchurch; he said to send you his best wishes. So many people are calling, Lynne, to wish you their best. You’ve got the entire country of New Zealand pulling for you,” he said.

Cataldo had watched the weather reports on television the night
before. A typhoon was hitting the Cook Islands, nearly fifteen hundred miles north of Cook Strait, and an Antarctic storm was raging about one thousand miles to the south. None of the forecasters thought the storms would affect us. But they did. Both storms were converging on Cook Strait, and we were sandwiched between them. That explained why the tides were so different from their normal pattern. It explained why we had been swept so far around the North Island. Although the storms were hundreds of miles from us, they were still affecting us. Without any landmasses to act as buffers, we were beginning to feel their effects as they continued their approach.

I felt as if I were swimming through a washing machine on spin cycle. Breathing was nearly impossible. I tried breathing later than normal, delaying my inhalation, letting my arms shield my face from the waves. But then my arms obscured my vision. That was dangerous. The skiff was becoming a real hazard. Cataldo was fighting to keep it on course, but the waves were lifting him four or five feet into the air, then tossing him sideways, right at me. I heard him shout, “Watch out, Lynne.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the skiff smashing down into a trough. Cutting quickly left, I felt the propeller graze my leg. Cataldo pulled hard to the right, knowing now that he had to, opening the space between us. This made navigation even more challenging for both of us. There were periods of time, ten or twenty seconds, when we couldn’t see each other at all. It was nuts. I felt as if I were swimming all over the ocean.

Sensing my frustration, a lifeguard from the support crew pulled his board closer to me. That made me feel better. There were sharks in Cook Strait, white pointers. A number of surfers had been killed by these sharks. We thought if there was any sign of a problem, such as a shark circling, I would get out.
When in doubt, get out
was always my axiom, but in this case, I don’t think we could really see anything.

Lifting my head again—it was becoming a very bad habit—I looked toward the South Island. The sea was a mass of white waves
breaking helter-skelter, without even the outline of the island on the horizon. I made a decision. Calmly, I pulled off my cap and goggles and shouted to Sonnichsen, “I don’t think I can go any farther. I want to get out.”

“Just swim another half mile,” Sonnichsen coaxed through the megaphone.

I wanted to drown that megaphone.

“You’re going through a bad period,” he said.

You’re not kidding,
I thought.

“Here, have some apple juice,” he said.

I wished I had a cork. If I had a cork, I could stick it into that megaphone, and then I wouldn’t have to hear him.

The apple juice tasted sweet, delicious. I grabbed my knees to stretch out my back. The crew in the boat waved, cheered, and shouted encouraging words. Keith Hancox told me I was doing an incredible job. He said he had never seen a swimmer persevere through conditions like this. He was very impressed. That gave me a real lift. I respected him—now more than ever since I understood what he had achieved—and his encouragement helped me find my resolve.

For the next half an hour we made progress, but the seas were relentless. They were cresting at five feet, and when I lifted my head and looked at the size of the space between us and the horizon, I pulled off my cap again and said, “I really can’t go any farther.” Memories of the Nile River flooded my mind; that level of exhaustion was something I never wanted to repeat. I was so tired.

Sandy Blewett jumped into the water and swam over to me. “Come on, let’s see some of that Cox courage,” she said, which got me moving again. She swam for half an hour with me, then had to climb out. She had had a back injury before this attempt, and she was in pain. I knew she was the one who had courage. For a while after she got out, I continued, but I felt discouraged.

Captain Brown, the pilot for the
Aritaka,
a cross-channel passenger ferry, changed the course of his ship and raced over to us. It was against the rules of his company, but in his mind I was a ship in distress,
and he was determined to help. He pulled the ship alongside us and raised the American flag, while hundreds of passengers climbed out on deck. They waved and cheered and stayed beside us for ten or twenty minutes.

When they left, Keith Hancox shouted, “I spoke with Captain Brown on the radio. He told me that all of New Zealand is following your progress. All the boats that pass between the islands and all the planes that fly overhead have been watching you all day long.” His voice was filled with both excitement and fatigue.

I was overwhelmed. It didn’t matter to them that I wasn’t from their country.

The waves in Cook Strait were up to seven feet high now. I could just make out the outline of the South Island.
How am I ever going to do this?
I wondered.
Keep going. Just keep going,
and for a while I did, but my attitude was quickly turning for the worse.

Keith Hancox waved me over to the boat and suggested that I stop and drink some apple juice. He told me, “All day long, local yachtsmen and fishermen have been radioing us, and giving us updates on the water condition out ahead. Air New Zealand has been following our progress too; they’ve been radioing our boats, giving us weather updates.” Then he pointed. “Look up there in the sky.”

An Air New Zealand jet was circling overhead, and it dipped its wing to salute us.

Hancox turned to pick up the radio, listened, then turned to me and said excitedly, “The prime minister of New Zealand, Prime Minister Rowling, just called. He said to tell you, ‘We believe you can cross the mighty Cook Strait. You can do it. You have the entire nation of New Zealand behind you.’”

I looked at the ocean. The waves were now eight feet high, too big to take in all at once; I had to tip my head back to see an entire wave. I prayed, “Please, God, I can’t do this without your help. I need the waves to go down. I need you to make something happen. I can’t do this.” I put my head down and started swimming again. The winds were shifting all around, blasting us from one direction, then the other, and they had increased to thirty-five knots. When I reached the
crest of a wave I looked across the sea, and there was the South Island. It was getting larger, sharper.

I put my head down. My arms felt like they were on fire. Everything ached. I buried my head, hoping to get lower in the water so I wouldn’t become airborne, so I could let the waves wash over me, so I could go through the heart of them and continue to move forward.

“Robbie, what was that?” I shouted to a lifeguard on the paddle-board.

A large, dark streak had brushed beneath me, and it had moved quickly.

Robbie peered down into the water. “It’s probably the reflection of the boat,” he said, but he continued looking down.

“There it is!” I shouted with my head up, feeling myself swimming rapidly on the upper inches of the water.

Robbie’s eyes got as large as saucers, and he shouted to the crew, “Check below!”

Before they could say or do anything, five large black forms broke the water’s surface.

“They’re dolphins,” Cataldo shouted gleefully, making a dolphin move with his hand.

Two black-and-white dolphins that looked like they were wearing tuxedos swam right beneath us. In unison, they rolled over on their backs and looked up at us. I could see their big brown eyes as they rolled over simultaneously. Suddenly three more leaped out of the water in front of us.

“Those are the scouts. They’re having a good look at us,” Cataldo shouted. He was laughing, knowing what was going to happen next.

Moments later the sea was filled with the voices of dolphins chattering, squeaking, clicking, whistling, calling. Their voices were fast and excited. Pods of dolphins arrived. There were twenty, then thirty, and when I looked down through the crystal-clear water, I saw dolphins below, and dolphins below them, and yet more dolphins. They were threading their way between one another, moving in close, rotating onto their sides so they could look up and see us better. It
seemed as if they were happy, as if they somehow knew we needed them. It was inspiring. Maybe they were the answer to my prayer.

In unison, two dolphins swimming snout to snout rolled over and gazed up at me. They held that position on their sides for maybe an entire minute, as if they were checking me out. They were clicking and whistling back and forth, communicating with each other and with others nearby. When they rolled back over, I wanted to reach down and just touch them. Extending my arm, I tried to get closer, but they maintained a distance of at least a couple of arm’s lengths. The wind died slightly, too, and the sea grew flatter.