Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [148]
A few minutes later, I lifted my right foot and waved to Laura and Susan in one Zodiac. They smiled, and I heard Shawn laugh. Shawn waved back with his hand. I took a big breath and and shouted to the crew in the other Zodiac: “Are you doing okay?”
Chris, the cameraman, said, “Did she just say what I thought she said?”
I extended my reach into the water. The crew couldn’t believe I was still swimming. And I was surprising myself. Lifting my right foot, I waved again. The crew waved back. I checked my watch. I had completed fifteen minutes. My skin was freezing cold and I was tired, but I thought, This was supposed to be a test swim, and the crew was supposed to practice pulling me out, but I don’t want to practice being pulled out. I’m very cold on the outside, but on the inside, I feel warm. I want to push farther. Besides, this may be the only swim I get to do. The weather could turn bad in the next day or so. I think I can keep going.
I stretched out my pull and looked down into the water. Seventeen minutes, nineteen minutes. We were paralleling large icebergs, some as big as houses; others were the size of hockey pucks. Some were box-shaped, as if they had snapped off the glaciers; others were exquisitely carved and curved by the wind and smoothed by the sea. They were dancing ice sculptures, gliding and spinning on the current.
As we neared shore we turned to the right. The crew began pointing and yelling.
I heard Dan shout, “Lynne, ice!”
I just missed a block the size of a refrigerator. It was hard to judge the speed of the icebergs. They moved at different rates, like meteors, and I was trying to cut across their path.
The crew shouted again, pointing at small pieces of brash ice. This ice was transparent and hard to spot. I spun to my left.
“Watch out!” Barry pointed to my right.
I didn’t react quickly enough; I swam headfirst into a piece the size of a big dog, and hit it hard. The impact brought hot tears to my eyes. I wondered if I would have a bump. We were moving into a field mined with ice. From the boat on my right, I heard Susan yelling, “Lynne, watch out!” as Laura pointed to my right. I swerved to the left. Shawn was shouting, repeating, “Ice, ice!” to make sure I heard him, and Casey was directing me around a large chunk. I was breathing only on my right side now, focused on that side because the ice chunks and bergs seemed to be flowing in from that direction. I didn’t realize the ice was all around us until I heard Barry on my left side. He was leaning way over the side of the Zodiac, waving me away from the boat. I was swimming within inches of a large piece, and its edges were as sharp as broken glass. I could tell that if I got any closer to it, Dan was prepared to jump in and push it away. Clear ice the size of a hall mirror was barely visible on the surface, but it expanded below the surface, like an eight-foot-wide upside-down snow cone. I looked at the base of the iceberg, then saw the shore. I couldn’t help myself; I started sprinting faster. I should have been more careful, but I just wanted to get clear of the ice field and finish. I wasn’t paying attention to the crew, and I slammed headfirst into a round chunk of ice the size of a soccer ball. My forehead registered a sort of blinding pain. I wanted to stop and rub it, but I decided instead to swim the last few yards with my head up; that way I would take the hits to my chest instead of my head.
When the passengers from the Orlova, who had no idea what we were doing and had been exploring King George Island, saw the Zodiacs landing, they ran down to the water’s edge to