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By Root 406 0

from the water. I felt great after that workout, and the following day, in addition to the support from the coast guard, we had the Argentine navy offering to provide backup boat support, as well as allowing the CBS crew to film from one of their ships. After that workout, one of the rescue swimmers from the Argentine navy came over to congratulate me, to tell me how impressed he was with my swimming in the harbor. At the same time, José, a local man who had climbed Mount Everest the year before, came over to tell me that he was amazed by my swim in the harbor. He told me that many people had climbed Mount Everest, but no one else could do what I had done. I thanked him and smiled, thinking, If he only knew what I was really training for. Their comments gave me a real boost, and I could feel a momentum was building; we were on track, and we were ready. I was so excited.

That night, we boarded the Orlova, a three-hundred-foot-long icebreaker leased by Quark Expeditions, which was partially sponsoring the swim, and set sail for Antarctica. We traveled through the Beagle Channel and into the Drake Passage, where the waves were as high as twenty-five feet—as tall as a two-story house. They pounded, tossed, turned, and rolled the ship. Sleeping that night was impossible for me; I was in the upper bunk, and I was afraid that I would fly out of bed and land on top of Martha Kaplan across the room. My fears weren’t unwarranted: at two a.m. a large wave hit the ship with so much force that the dresser drawers between the beds flew open and everything on top of the desk was tossed across the room, while two chairs crashed onto the floor.

In the morning, we were still in the center of a storm. Waves were hitting the porthole and spinning so quickly that it looked like we were riding in a washing machine set on the spin cycle. Many of my crew were using medicated patches to prevent seasickness, but I couldn’t. I was afraid the drug would linger in my system and somehow affect me negatively during the swim. Still, I was also concerned about getting seasick. If that happened, I would deplete electrolytes from my system and stress it out. I couldn’t afford to get sick, so I stayed in bed, telling myself to relax, and imagined I was being rocked in a giant cradle.

Finally, by noon, the storm subsided, but the majority of my crew remained down in their cabins. I met with Susan Adie, the expedition leader for Quark. She was the person who would work the logistics out with me and determine when conditions were safe enough for a swim. Susan told me she had some concerns; her biggest was ice. She explained that we had to stay away from glaciers. “There could be a catastrophic calving,” she said. “That’s when an iceberg breaks off a glacier and hits the water—you get a mini tsunami. That wave can swamp a boat, and if you’re in the water with brash ice—ice as small as a fist or as big as a VW—it will kill you.”

She continued: “You and your crew will have to wait until the other passengers are ashore before you make your swim, and if the weather changes during that time, you won’t be able to go.”

“What about tides? Is there any way we can look at tidal charts and figure out the best time to swim?” I asked.

“You’re fortunate because you’re here on a neap tide, so there’s less water movement. But tidal charts won’t help. We don’t have any for this area. Even though scientists have been studying tides at Palmer Station, the American research base, for twenty-seven years, no one knows what the tides here are doing. Some days we get two tides; other days we get only one. Sometimes there’s a strong tidal current, and sometimes you don’t have much current at all. You just have to go when the weather looks good,” she said.

This was something I had never done before. Usually the tides were a large factor in planning a swim. I guessed I would just have to go with whatever I was given and make the most of it. I understood that this swim would draw on everything I knew and many things I didn’t know. That’s what made it exciting to me, exploring and