Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [16]
That put some uncertainty into his head, and while he tried to shield us from it, we knew that deep down inside Ron wondered if we would make it. We did too, but that was part of what made this swim so exciting.
Beginning two weeks before the swim, my mother drove me to Seal Beach every night at midnight and stood on the pier with the other mothers, watching me swim. She sometimes stayed for an hour. I could see her under the lamplight, bundled up in a camel-hair coat and red scarf. Sometimes I could smell the coffee in her mug, and I always heard her voice when she was talking with the other mothers or shouting a few encouraging words to me and the team. She didn’t stay for the whole workout, though; she had to get home to sleep and take care of the rest of the family.
We swam the same amount of time, from three to four hours a night, doing distances of five to ten miles. But it was very different from swimming in the morning darkness. At midnight the sky and sea were deeper black and a little more eerie, and the golden lights in the homes lining the shores of Seal Beach looked warm and inviting. As the first week passed, sometimes I wished I could go inside one of those homes and just curl up and go to sleep.
Our bodies were tired from the workouts, and we were having difficulty adjusting to the time change. After our workouts we had to force ourselves to stay awake. We’d congregate at Nancy Dale’s or Stacey Fresonske’s house and have a stay-awake party. We would take showers, play card games and board games, watch old movies and television, eat popcorn and drink hot chocolate.
By six a.m. we would be nudging one another, trying to keep ourselves awake. There were teammates who got cranky, but we didn’t care; we were in this together, and we were determined to keep each other awake. We tickled teammates’ noses with feathers and put peanut butter on their hands so that when they went to scratch their nose they got peanut butter on their face. We created other gentle forms of torture that kept us laughing and motivated us to avoid being the object of these pranks.
At nine or ten in the morning, we would head home. My mother would pick me up, and once home, I’d immediately slide into bed. With all the normal daily phone calls and family activity it was difficult to sleep during the day. It was also difficult to sleep because with every passing day we were getting closer to the day of the attempt, and our excitement was multiplying exponentially.
Toward the end of the two-week period, we had almost gotten our bodies adjusted to the time change. On that last morning we met at Nancy Dale’s home. She opened two bottles of sparkling cider and poured it into some champagne glasses. “I want to make a toast,” she said with delight, handing us the glasses.
We raised them high into the air and she said, “We will make this swim across the Catalina Channel as a team. No matter what happens, we will stay together and we will become the first group of kids ever to do this.” We drank the sweet cider and broke out into cheers and wide smiles.
4
Twenty-six Miles Across the Sea
We traveled in a forty-foot fishing boat piloted by Dr. Fresonske, Stacey’s father, to Catalina Island. On board were members of the Seal Beach and Long Beach lifeguard crews who had volunteered to escort us on the crossing on long paddleboards or in kayaks. John Stockwell and Lyle Johnson, two burly old-time Long Beach lifeguards who had accompanied other swimmers on cross-channel attempts, planned to meet us at Divers Cove on the Isthmus, the westernmost section of the island and the closest point to the mainland.
We reached Catalina Island in late afternoon, a trip that took just two and a half hours. For most of the journey we stayed in the cabin below, not wanting to see the distance we were going to swim, afraid that it would psych us out. We tried