Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [19]
“Yes,” we said. We turned and wished one another good luck, then we hugged. We walked to the edge of the ocean and Mr. Yeo said, “Okay, take your marks,” and then he fired the gun. We saw the white flash and heard the gunshot echoing off the cliff walls.
I walked into the water, dove through the surf, and began swimming. It felt wonderful, exciting, strange, and scary knowing that I had just pushed off Catalina Island and was now swimming across the vast Pacific Ocean to the North American continent. Turning my head and breathing, I saw the universe filled with light from distant constellations. I felt even smaller, and yet somehow powerful.
Swimming was difficult. While we could see the tiny lights on the dory and on the paddleboards, we couldn’t see one another. We were on edge. There were deep-water pelagic sharks in this channel: big ones, white ones, man- and woman-eating ones. No long-distance swimmer had been attacked during a crossing, yet we knew that they were down there somewhere and that any moment we could become a midnight snack.
We were swimming erratically—fast, moderate, then faster—and we were unable to settle down and establish a pace. This was using way too much energy. We needed to get into our flow and maintain one speed for efficiency. The truth was that we were excited and scared. We had never swum in such blackness. We couldn’t see our own arms or our hands pulling right beneath our bodies. For safety and a sense of security, we were swimming closer than we ever did in workouts. Stacey unintentionally elbowed me in the ribs; I nearly jumped out of my skin. Overcorrecting, she cut too far left and ran into Nancy. Spooked, Nancy let out a series of bloodcurdling screams. That set off a series of chain reactions, and we ran into each other, overcompensated, and ran into someone else.
Sharks are attracted to thrashing and splashing, sounds that resemble sick or injured fish. This is their food source. Using sensors on their snouts, they can detect electrical fields and feel, through their noses, the movement of fish and people in the water. Donald Nelson, a shark expert who did pioneering work in this field, once told me that sharks can detect even minute electrical fields emitted by fish and other animals. I wondered if they could feel the electrical impulses of our hearts. Mine was beating fast and strong. I pushed that thought away. It wouldn’t help me at all in my effort to swim across this channel. But I knew the way we were swimming, we sounded more like food than swimmers.
In the distance we could barely see the lead boat. It looked like a star on the water. The paddlers and kayaker were not visible, but I could hear them saying, “You’re doing a great job. Keep going.”
I lifted my head to find the tiny light on the dory and tried to maintain a constant distance from it, hoping that I could establish a pace this way. After perhaps an hour, it was hard to tell whether this plan was working; there were no reference points to help me determine the distance we had covered or the time it had taken to arrive at that point. Still, it seemed like we were settling into a pace, beginning to stretch out our arm strokes and slow our rapid breathing. Then someone squealed and adrenaline shot through my body, and I felt myself swimming on the upper inches of the water. Worse were those moments of not knowing. There was a delay between the scream and finding out what happened.
“It’s okay; it’s just seaweed. Don’t worry, relax—just reverse your stroke and you’ll untangle yourself,” one of the paddlers reassured us.
“There’s a problem,” someone said. There was a discussion, but it was hard to catch the conversation with my head underwater, so I swam with my head up.
“The lights on these boards are fading,” one paddler shouted. “So is the one on the dory. Look, it’s fading to orange. The batteries