Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [77]
13
Around the Cape of Good Hope
John Sonnichsen and I were driving south along the South African peninsula, toward the Cape of Good Hope, with Alex, Mario, and Doug—members of the Cape Town Police Department’s elite diving team who had volunteered to help me on my attempt to become the first person to swim around the Cape.
My previous swim, across the Strait of Magellan in forty-two-degree water, had made the Bering Strait seem physically possible. I had received information from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game that water temperatures in the Bering Strait ranged from thirty-eight to forty-four degrees in July and August. The question was, How much difference would three or four degrees make? Could I endure water temperatures below forty degrees? I wasn’t sure. So methodically, over the years, I had been making swims that I had hoped would be progressively colder and farther, swims between the Aleutian Islands off Alaska in the summer of 1976, between Norway and Sweden, and between Denmark and Sweden, all in pursuit of the Bering Strait goal. From one perspective or another, they were all challenging. In the case of the Aleutian Islands my swims were all firsts, and in the case of the Scandinavian swims, I set new records. Unfortunately, the water temperatures were always warmer than expected, with the exception of a swim in 1977 from Unalaska Island to Unalga Island in the Aleutian chain. There the water temperature was comparable to that in the Strait of Magellan, between forty-three and forty-four degrees. But the time it took me to complete it was long, an hour and a half. This gave me confidence that I could push further into the cold.
From a political standpoint, though, I was having great difficulty getting Soviet support. From my dorm room in 1976 I had begun a letter-writing campaign, contacting officials throughout the United States and the Soviet Union trying to obtain their support and get a visa to make the Bering Strait swim. It took months to hear back from American officials, because I actually think they didn’t believe the swim was possible. Worse, I’d gotten no response at all from the Soviets. So I decided to look at another goal, one that would be exciting, challenging, and something that had never been done before. Just as significantly, I wanted to explore the world, and understand it a little better.
My folks had been supportive of my swims, putting money into my swimming ventures and the goals of my siblings, rather than into material things for themselves. But these swims were getting expensive, so I began hunting for corporate sponsorship.
From the start, I was very fortunate; a friend put me in touch with a woman named Nancy Glascock. Her family had made money in the airplane business, manufacturing airplane blowers, those little devices on the ceiling that enable passengers to increase airflow on their faces.
Glascock said she admired my ability and wanted to support a woman who had adventurous goals. She said that women just didn’t get enough support as pioneers. Maybe she had discovered this for herself in business, being a company president. In any event, she agreed to underwrite the cost of the Cape of Good Hope swim.
Sonnichsen, the three policemen, and I were passing through Cape Peninsula National Park, heading toward Cape Point, at the tip of Africa. We turned a wide corner and encountered a herd of golden springbok leaping as if they had springs for legs, through dry grasses, across the beige plateau, beneath a brilliant rainbow that spanned the sky. Alex, the captain of the diving team, stomped on the brakes and told us to roll up our windows and lock our doors.
A troop of seven baboons broke from the bush, darted across the dirt road, and clambered onto the Range Rover’s roof. They tried to yank the doors open. Alex told us that baboon break-ins were quite common along the Cape Peninsula. The adult males were tremendously strong and would rip door handles off vehicles or smash windows to get to whatever they wanted. They were notorious for stealing beach towels