Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [120]
On Wednesday, August 5, the fog cleared and the Soviet team was mobilized. They flew to Big Diomede, set up tents, and moved in equipment and supplies. When everything was in place, they took turns staring through binoculars at the Eskimo village on Little Diomede. For hours they searched the shoreline, straining to see where the American team was.
Then a military lookout shouted from the beach. He had spotted something in the water heading toward Big Diomede. Sure that it had to be the American swimmer, they scurried from their mountainside tents, down a rocky and slippery cliff face to the beach. When the head coach for the Soviet national swim team took his turn looking through the binoculars, he started laughing out loud. It wasn’t a human swimmer moving toward shore; it was a seal.
The following morning, on Thursday, August 6, the Soviet welcome party crawled from their tents wondering again where the American team was.
We stood on the other side of the strait in the early evening—six o’clock. The sea was peaceful, and we could see the very top of Big Diomede’s volcanic cone. It looked so close, I just wanted to put on my bathing suit and swim across, but we had told the Soviets we would leave here at 8:00 a.m.
Rich Roberts, Dr. Nyboer Jr., and I stood onshore and studied Big Diomede. We didn’t know it then, but the Soviets were looking back across at Little Diomede through binoculars, wondering what had happened to us. They had had three more false alarms—all seal sightings—and they were beginning to wonder if we were ever going to come across. The last thing we had heard from Moscow was that at 8:00 a.m., we were supposed to release our balloons and push off from Little Diomede, then meet the Soviet boats at the border.
The Inuit families sang and danced all night long in celebration of the border opening. At 7:00 a.m., when we were supposed to shove off from shore and motor to the southern tip of Little Diomede, most of the villagers were sound asleep. Looking out of the window from a schoolhouse apartment where I had spent the night, I could clearly see Big Diomede, a snowcapped volcanic cone rising majestically out of the Bering Sea, which was as flat as a mirror, reflecting the wide blue heavens. It made me feel that there were no limits to the sky, and the world seemed to be filled with energy; everything seemed possible. I wanted to go, to start. I was so excited and nervous, so ready, I didn’t want to wait another moment. But we needed to wake the villagers and I needed to tell Kozlovsky that there was a delay. I called and reached an operator, but I couldn’t speak much Russian, and she couldn’t speak much English. She did know my name, though, and Kozlovsky’s, but that’s as far as I got. So I tried to reach Gene Fisher in Bob Walsh’s office. He was on his way to work.
Worse than that, a milky-gray fog bank was rapidly moving into the strait, snaking its way in front of Little Diomede. In a span of ten minutes the visibility to the north and south of us had dropped from one mile to less than half a mile, and I was becoming agitated. I hated fog. I had been lost in it during the Catalina Channel swim and scared out of my wits. If I got lost in the Bering Sea, in water this cold, I wouldn’t only be lost, I’d be dead.
Fog continued streaming into the strait, filling it with clouds that were strangling the light. I knew we had to move, so I started to gather the crew together. I asked Dr. Keatinge if we could get started now. That’s when I found out that the Soviets and my crew already knew about the delay. Without consulting me, someone in my crew had spoken with Gene Fisher at Walsh’s office and had postponed our departure time until noon. Fisher had immediately transmitted this information to Moscow, and they’d confirmed the update. The Soviets would have their boats at the