Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [37]
For the first three hours, we flew across the sea. Mickey and my mother were sitting near the bow, and every hour Mickey would count my strokes for a minute, making sure I maintained my pace. They did not take their eyes off of me, and I felt as if they were propelling me along with their thoughts. I was so happy they were beside me. Brickell, too, was the complete professional. He would stand at the pilot’s cabin, move inside to check his navigational system and continually update our course, then step outside to check on me. When I turned my head to breathe, I heard the ship’s radio, someone talking on it, and the weather forecast. I couldn’t quite hear it and wondered what it was saying.
Maybe around four in the morning I started running into round balls. It was too dark to see anything, and it was strange to feel them rolling off my body. I had never felt kelp like that before; I couldn’t imagine what it was. Finally, the curiosity overwhelmed me, and I shouted, “Mr. Brickell, what’s in the water?”
“Lettuce. Someone dumped a shipload of old lettuce,” he said, and laughed.
Somehow I’d never expected to be swimming through a sea of lettuce.
The current carried us north as expected, and we quickly completed the bottom of the loop of the inverted S. I could tell that Brickell was pleased. That made me feel stronger, knowing that I was swimming right on pace and we were right in sync.
By five hours into the swim, I was starting to feel fatigued; I had been working at 80 percent of my maximum speed, nearly sprinting across. I tried to think of Hans, how he kept swimming with intensity for each one hundred; this was the same thing, only I was thinking in terms of one mile at a time. “Mom, could I have some apple juice?”
She tossed me a bottle of fresh water, and I rinsed my mouth; then she threw a bottle of warm apple juice to me. Floating on my back, I took a couple of sips while Brickell explained the situation. “You’re right on course and you’re three hours ahead of world-record time. I can’t believe it. You’ve the fastest swimmer I’ve ever seen,” he said.
“You picked a great night,” I said.
“The wind’s supposed to increase five knots. But you should have no problems,” he said with absolute confidence.
Not wanting to waste time or to get cold and have my muscles grow stiff, I began swimming fast again. The juice boosted my blood sugar and I felt a lot stronger. My father had recommended that I stop to feed every hour to maintain my blood-sugar levels, but I hadn’t wanted to stop at all. I just wanted to keep going. Now, looking back on it, I knew he was right; it would have helped significantly. But I was still on pace, swimming better than I had imagined.
About an hour later, Brickell came out of the pilot’s house and waved at me to lift my head up and listen. He asked, “Do you think you can sprint for a mile?”
I had been swimming hard already, and the thought of sprinting—well, it would be harder. But yes, I told him, I could do it.
“Good, because there’s an oil tanker coming down the Channel at nine knots. He cannot stop for you. You’re either going to have to wait here and tread water for thirty minutes or cross the tanker lane before he gets there,” Brickell explained. He didn’t mention that once we had committed we could not hesitate or we could be crushed by the oil tanker. Somehow I already knew how serious this was.
“Okay, I’ll sprint,” I said quickly, putting my head down and taking off, moving as fast as I could for about twenty minutes, until I saw Brickell wave to me again and point. The tanker passed us like a whale cruising past a minnow, with the bow waves surging toward us, lifting us high into the air, maybe fifteen feet, and we surfed the waves toward France.
By seven a.m. my arms were burning. They felt like I had been lifting twenty-five-pound dumbbells for hours. My neck was sore, as I had been raising my head up to see the French coast, now a dark outline on the horizon. And my lower back ached and I was getting tired. Stopping to stretch my back