Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [150]
Once I stopped shivering and was able to hold a mug, the three doctors and I drank a toast of tea to our new Polish friends. We took some photos together, got a quick tour of their lab, and said goodbye. The wind outside the hut had increased to forty knots. A storm was moving in rapidly from the south, and we needed to get out to the ship before it broke or we would have to spend the night in the hut and delay the ship’s sailing.
Barry was waiting outside the hut for us. He gave me a huge hug. He was as thrilled as I was. He and Susan held me under each arm and helped me walk across the beach. I was deeply fatigued. My legs kept slipping out from underneath me, and if Barry and Susan hadn’t been holding on to me, I would have taken two or three nosedives.
The Zodiac operator who had been driving the Zodiac on my left side during the swim was waiting for us. Amazed, he said to me, “If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it.” He shook my hand and directed me to sit on a pontoon beside him. On the ride back to the Orlova, the waves were steep, three to four feet, and it felt as if we were flying down a roller coaster. Each time a wave slammed into the bow, icy water flew into the boat. Brad Stahl, the Zodiac driver, had positioned me behind Barry so I could duck behind him and stay dry; that way I wouldn’t get chilled or experience an afterdrop.
When we reached the ship, the passengers on the Orlova cheered as we climbed back up the ramp. I had swum for twenty-two minutes and fourteen seconds, covering .92 mile in thirty-three-degree water. No one had known that I would be able to swim that far on my first attempt, not even I, and I felt like we had achieved a lot. Now I believed that we could move forward with the larger goal, the one I had been contemplating for the past two years. I believed I was ready to attempt the first Antarctic mile, the first swim to the continent of Antarctica. And I believed the crew now had the confidence in me to help me achieve it. In spite of my fatigue, I felt a surge of energy.
As I walked back to my cabin, passengers and crew members hugged and congratulated me. I took a very long, hot shower and rested on my bunk. I needed to recover as quickly as I could from the swim, replenish my fluids, and flush out the lactic acid. I drank two twelve-ounce servings of a solution of maple syrup and water. My thinking was that when a maple tree goes from dormancy to budding, it uses sap as energy, so why shouldn’t I use it for rewarming and for energy?
That night when I ate dinner with my crew, everyone’s spirits were high. I had swum for twenty-two minutes and I had surprised them as well as myself. It was a much longer test swim than any of us had expected. We celebrated with toasts and tales and a lot of laughter. This gave me time to pause and relax. But that night, as I lay in bed, in anticipation of the big swim, I reflected on the day and the things I wanted to do better. I had never shivered so hard in my life, and it had been extremely uncomfortable. I wasn’t looking forward to doing that again. And since the water closer to the mainland would be colder, I suspected the shivering would be more violent or more prolonged or both. I decided that if I got the chance to swim a mile, I would need to crank my arm speed up and move faster to generate more heat; that way I wouldn’t be as cold at the end of the swim and wouldn’t have to shiver so hard. The bottoms of my feet were black and blue and tender from being bruised on the rocks.