Swimming to Antarctica (18 page)

The storm was hitting the strait hard now. This time, Captain Furniss didn’t even attempt to land the
Elicura.

The frogmen quickly helped me into their boat, and we motored out to the ship. All of us were elated, but we couldn’t let our guard down yet; waves were washing into the inflatable and the skiff.

Climbing up the ship’s ladder was even hairier than the first time, but I was glad I’d done it before, because this time my hands were numb and I couldn’t tell if I had a good hold on the rungs. The boat was swaying more than before, and I was really scared, but kept moving up the ladder. When I reached the top Captain Furniss wrapped a towel around my shoulders, hugged me, and said congratulations. He
said he was sorry, but it was too dangerous to land the ship, so we would have to ride back to Punta Arenas through the gale. Excited, I told him I thought that was great; I’d never been on a ship during a gale. Captain Furniss grinned; he was happy too—we had accomplished a lot. But he had to make sure that Sonnichsen and his men and their boat got safely on board, so he handed me over to Dr. Fernandez, who gave me a huge, warm hug.

John Sonnichsen and I were driving south along the South African peninsula, toward the Cape of Good Hope, with Alex, Mario, and Doug—members of the Cape Town Police Department’s elite diving team who had volunteered to help me on my attempt to become the first person to swim around the Cape.

My previous swim, across the Strait of Magellan in forty-two-degree water, had made the Bering Strait seem physically possible. I had received information from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game that water temperatures in the Bering Strait ranged from thirty-eight to forty-four degrees in July and August. The question was, How much difference would three or four degrees make? Could I endure water temperatures below forty degrees? I wasn’t sure. So methodically, over the years, I had been making swims that I had hoped would be progressively colder and farther, swims between the Aleutian Islands off Alaska in the summer of 1976, between Norway and Sweden, and between Denmark and Sweden, all in pursuit of the Bering Strait goal. From one perspective or another, they were all challenging. In the case of the Aleutian Islands my swims were all firsts, and in the case of the Scandinavian swims, I set new records. Unfortunately, the water temperatures were always warmer than expected, with the exception of a swim in 1977 from Unalaska Island to Unalga Island in the Aleutian chain. There the water temperature
was comparable to that in the Strait of Magellan, between forty-three and forty-four degrees. But the time it took me to complete it was long, an hour and a half. This gave me confidence that I could push further into the cold.

From a political standpoint, though, I was having great difficulty getting Soviet support. From my dorm room in 1976 I had begun a letter-writing campaign, contacting officials throughout the United States and the Soviet Union trying to obtain their support and get a visa to make the Bering Strait swim. It took months to hear back from American officials, because I actually think they didn’t believe the swim was possible. Worse, I’d gotten no response at all from the Soviets. So I decided to look at another goal, one that would be exciting, challenging, and something that had never been done before. Just as significantly, I wanted to explore the world, and understand it a little better.

My folks had been supportive of my swims, putting money into my swimming ventures and the goals of my siblings, rather than into material things for themselves. But these swims were getting expensive, so I began hunting for corporate sponsorship.

From the start, I was very fortunate; a friend put me in touch with a woman named Nancy Glascock. Her family had made money in the airplane business, manufacturing airplane blowers, those little devices on the ceiling that enable passengers to increase airflow on their faces.

Glascock said she admired my ability and wanted to support a woman who had adventurous goals. She said that women just didn’t get enough support as pioneers. Maybe she had discovered this for herself in business, being a company president. In any event, she agreed to underwrite the cost of the Cape of Good Hope swim.

Sonnichsen, the three policemen, and I were passing through Cape Peninsula National Park, heading toward Cape Point, at the tip of Africa. We turned a wide corner and encountered a herd of golden springbok leaping as if they had springs for legs, through dry grasses, across the beige plateau, beneath a brilliant rainbow that spanned the sky. Alex, the captain of the diving team, stomped on the brakes and told us to roll up our windows and lock our doors.

A troop of seven baboons broke from the bush, darted across the dirt road, and clambered onto the Range Rover’s roof. They tried to yank the doors open. Alex told us that baboon break-ins were quite common along the Cape Peninsula. The adult males were tremendously strong and would rip door handles off vehicles or smash windows to get to whatever they wanted. They were notorious for stealing beach towels and sandals and helping themselves to your barbecue. When Alex said they once stole Mario’s swim fins, the three men broke into laughter.

It was obvious that these three men were a close team. The elite diving team had been established to search for and recover human bodies and evidence. These bodies were victims who had drowned in the sea, lakes, and rivers around Cape Town, by accident or by foul play. The most difficult places to find people were in the black pools that dotted the rolling veldt. It could be dangerous and frightening work. There was no visibility in the black ponds, so after two members of the team roped themselves together, a third member would stand onshore and slowly lower them into the blackness. Sometimes the divers got tangled or pinned under tree stumps, or were sucked into thick muck, or lost their sense of direction, and were unable to figure out which way was up. Panic was not an option. If a diver moved the wrong way, he could inadvertently cut his own oxygen line. Despite the danger, he’d have to maintain his presence of mind and calmly wait for his team members to free him. This calmness under pressure was exactly what I needed for my attempted swim around the Cape of Good Hope. But they also had additional qualifications.

For fun, Alex, Doug, and Mario went spearfishing around Cape Point. The fish populations in that area were very high, due to an incredible amount of upwelling, which created an abundance of plankton, which the fish fed on. With many fish came seal herds, as well as large predatory sharks, including great whites. The great whites were eighteen to twenty-five feet long, and they could swallow a seal whole.

The white fishermen at Haut Bay, a suburb of Cape Town, told Sonnichsen and me that these great whites were common around the Cape. The fishermen even had names for them; one they called Big
Ben, another the Torpedo. At first I thought they were telling us fish stories, but at Kalk Bay, another harbor near Cape Town, we found three black fishermen off-loading their morning’s catch. The oldest man in the group asked if he could help us. We were out of place, but neither Sonnichsen nor I knew that in South Africa at that time there were separate harbors, ones for blacks and ones for whites.

The old fisherman walked cautiously over to us. His eyes were clouded with cataracts; his hands were dry and crisscrossed by cuts. When we asked him if he could give us some information about currents around the Cape, he said he would try and he smiled. But when he discovered what I wanted to do there, his smile disappeared.

In addition to the great whites there were other aggressive sharks, such as tigers and bronze whalers. The tigers were always in the area, while the bronze whalers were migratory and only swim to Cape Point in the summer. These sharks are so aggressive that one had recently jumped into a local fisherman’s boat to get at him.

He gave us another tidbit of information: usually sharks bump their victims before they bite them, to make sure they’re food.

The old fisherman asked me if I was sure I wanted to swim around the Cape. I nodded, but in truth, I had some real doubts; I’d never swum with so many sharks before. We had a solid plan, I told him. Alex’s diving team would be in the water with me, watching for sharks. Another diver would be towed behind a ski boat, hanging on to a rope with one hand and carrying a shark gun in the other. If the diver sighted a shark and it looked threatening, I’d get out of the water; if there wasn’t time for me to clear the water, he’d have to shoot it.

Shaking his head, the fisherman asked me if I was frightened. I nodded. He looked directly into my eyes, as if to make sure it was okay and as if to say, Don’t worry. First he closed his eyes and nodded slowly, then opened his eyes, put his hand on my shoulder, and chanted something in Zulu. When he finished, a younger man said that his grandfather had just given me a Zulu blessing. He had asked the Great Spirit to keep the sharks away so I would return safely to shore.

Despite his kindness and blessing, for the next week, prior to the swim, I had shark dreams. One night I dreamed that Big Ben swallowed me whole. I rode on a stream of water over his tongue, past his enormous uvula, and down into his stomach. But my presence irritated his stomach, and he coughed me out. Another night I dreamed that a
Jaws-s
iz
ed
shark came up from under the water, bumped me, and tried to bite me, but my team managed to grab me and drag me out of the water in the nick of time.

Alex and I had discussed using a shark cage, but the cage would be impossible to tow through high surf. And during the swim, if we suddenly got a set of waves, they could push the cage down, taking me with it. Besides that, the drag created by the cage would create a current that would enable me to swim up to 30 percent faster; I would be towed by the cage. To me this was cheating. So we decided to have two boats for the swim, one positioned on either side of me. The larger, thirty-five-foot ski boat would be on my left side, closest to shore, as we rounded the cape; on my right would be a rubber inflatable, a Zodiac. Alex and Sonnichsen would be in the Zodiac, and Mario and Doug and a few other spearfishing friends on the ski boat. They would take turns standing guard, and because of the intensity of the swim, they would change places every twenty minutes. The man being pulled along would hold the tow rope with one hand and a spear gun in the other. We had discussed using bang sticks, but the crew said they were too dangerous; they could explode by accident, injuring or killing the diver and swimmer. The spear guns sounded like a better idea. Two local swimmers, Hugh and Dennis, offered to ride along in the ski boat to serve as shark spotters.

Once the elite diving team, Sonnichsen, and I reached Cape Point, we picked our way through flowering protea bushes and shrubs to the cliffs overlooking the ocean. To the left was the powder blue Indian Ocean and to the right, the deep-cobalt blue Atlantic. Directly below us was a seething white line of foam jutting directly out from the point for at least half a mile. This was where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans collided.

From our vantage point a thousand feet above the beach, we could
see the waves breaking. We couldn’t tell how large they were, but the granite cliffs beneath our feet trembled as the waves impacted the beach. We could hear the concussions of waves as they broke on the shore and their echoes as the sound carried around the cove. It was ominous.

Sonnichsen and I had discussed the pros and cons of the start and finish and had finally decided to start on the Atlantic side, in an area called McClears Beach. Our route would take us around Cape Point and back into Buffels Beach, on the Indian Ocean side. The swim would cover a minimum of ten miles, all depending upon the currents.

Alex and John headed back to the harbor to get the Zodiac and meet up with the ski-boat crew. When they reached the point by boat, they would wait for us about a mile offshore. Alex was concerned about the Cape rollers. These were waves that got up to thirty feet high in the summer and one hundred feet high in winter. Caused by storms and calving icebergs in Antarctica, these rogue waves would suddenly rise up from out of nowhere and sink ships that were sailing near the Cape. Alex thought that if they stayed at least a mile offshore they would avoid any problems.

Doug led the way down a narrow rock trail; I followed with Mario and a group of journalists. Doug was carrying a long steel rod. It was the spear gun, but it measured less than an inch in diameter. I wondered how that was ever going to stop a shark.

The path narrowed, grew steeper, and became overgrown with thorny scrub. Doug warned me to be careful where I placed my hands. I thought he was concerned that I would get a handful of thorns. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the problem. There were large venomous snakes in the Cape area—Cape cobras, coral snakes, ring-necked spitting cobras, and puff adders. The Cape cobra grew up to five feet long. It could spit venom eight feet away, blinding its prey, then move faster than lightning to bite it. All of these snakes liked to coil up and rest in the bushes.

As we approached a rocky area, Mario wanted me to watch my footing. He had seen puff adders sunning themselves in the area just
last week. The puff adders were locally known as large lazy snakes that wouldn’t slither away or give you any warning they were underfoot. If you stepped on one, it would just turn and inject its deadly venom into your leg.

I was scared to death of snakes. We managed to make it safely to the base of the cliffs, and I was relieved—until Doug told me that we might encounter one more snake in the water, the yellow-bellied sea snake, known as the cobra of the sea. These sea snakes don’t attack. They do bite if disturbed, but their mouths are very small. There was a good possibility that we would see them in the sea slicks, long narrow lines on the ocean’s surface where the currents converge, where debris accumulates, and where the water is calmer.

When we reached the powdery white beach, the waves towered above our heads. They were at least fifteen to twenty feet high, taller than any wave I’d ever seen. And they were breaking on the beach with so much force, I couldn’t hear anything else. I’d had no experience with huge surf, but I knew that if I made a mistake, I would be clobbered.

Doug and Mario squeezed into their wet suits while I took off my sweats and handed them to a journalist. He planned to go around the Cape by car and meet us at the finish. It seemed like it was taking an awfully long time for Doug and Mario to get ready. Mario shouted in my ear that he was also a little worried about the surf.

Doug asked me to give the journalist any rings or earrings or bracelets before I got into the water. There were snook in the sea, barracuda-like fish with sharp teeth. They could be aggressive, and it was better not to wear anything that would attract them.

Doug and I walked down a slope to the edge of the beach, Mario lagging behind a little. The waves were crashing with so much force I could feel the shock vibrating through my entire body. Wave foam was flying over our heads and into our faces. Following closely behind Doug, I looked back and saw Mario licking his mask to keep it from fogging, then pulling it over his head.

Almost as soon as I entered the water, the bottom dropped out from under me. I was in foam five feet high, up to my neck. It was
like entering the largest bubble bath in the world, only this tub was filled with fifty-eight-degree water. Waves were surging toward us, gaining height by the second. A rip caught Doug and me and dragged us rapidly toward a wave that must have been twenty feet high, its crest beginning to curl. I fought the water. Trying to remain near shore until the wave broke, I leaned back, then sprinted across the froth. It was so strange: I was pulling fast and hard, but the water was so full of bubbles there was nothing to push against, no resistance, nothing to grab so I could propel myself beyond the waves. Another wave towered toward me. It broke above my head. I dove deep, pulling fast through the foam, working hard to get down low, really low, before the wave collapsed on me.