by Lynne Cox
I dove into the deep black water with my arms extended over my head. And when I surfaced I could hear the others swimming but couldn’t see them. Listening for the sound of their hands hitting the water, I swam in that direction. And then I could see just the outlines of their bodies. We were swimming in the early morning because the water was calmer and it would give us a feeling for what it would be like to swim across the Catalina Channel at night.
We lined up side by side, making sure the lifeguard tower on the pier was behind us. We aimed for the flashing green lights on top of the oil islands in Long Beach, using these lights as navigational points, and began swimming toward them. We moved in unison across the water. With Stacey and Dale on either side of me, I felt like a young dolphin protected by older dolphins, riding in their slipstream.
Once we reached the Seal Beach jetty, the half-mile mark, we turned and swam back toward the pier, using the light on top of the lifeguard tower as our reference point. Light was gathering on the horizon as seagulls, pelicans, and sandpipers were rising with the light. Between the rush of breaking waves we heard their plaintive calls overhead.
When we approached the pier, Ron and our mothers were hanging over the railings and shouting, “Good job, kids” and “All right, way to go.”
“How are you all feeling?” Ron asked.
“Good,” the team chimed, and I said, “Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.”
My teammates didn’t think I was being serious, but I was. For the team, open-water swimming was old news. It was hard to drag themselves out of bed at four-thirty in the morning and dive into cold water. It was hard to not just roll over and go back to sleep. They had to want to do this. But they’d been working toward this goal for a year. Somehow Ron understood that having someone new on their team would help rekindle their excitement and revitalize their spirit. And I knew I was lucky to be included.
Ron gave us another set: “I want you to swim five miles. Descending. That means you’re going to swim the first mile at a moderate speed, then make each one after that faster. The last mile should be an all-out sprint.
“And Lynne, go at your own speed. Also, you’re going to find that the straps of your nylon swimsuit chafe badly. You might want to do like the other girls and tie a string around your waist so you can drop your straps. That keeps your swimsuit from falling off. You can use Vaseline instead on the friction points, but it doesn’t work very well.”
The orange sun rose slowly above the lip of the sea, creating a river of light that bathed the swimmers in gold. We swam the first three miles together, and then Stacey and Andy broke away with me. We were flying across the sea, arm to arm, breath to breath, pulling deeper into the water, pressing each other forward, moving faster and faster. Inside me there was still so much more energy ready to burst forth. But it was better for me to hold back, and until I had been with them longer, I didn’t want to pose a challenge to them; I wanted to fit in and be part of the team.
One of our toughest training swims came a week later. We were supposed to make a ten-mile swim from the Seal Beach Pier to Bolsa Chica State Beach and back. Ron was rowing in front of us in a heavy wooden dory. We were taking short breaks to test our different hot drinks. In 1971, water bottles hadn’t been invented yet, so before workout we had filled plastic ketchup bottles with hot tea with sugar, warm orange juice, beef broth, hot apple cider, hot chocolate, and coffee loaded with sugar. We were trying to figure out what we could use on the Catalina crossing to boost our blood sugar and replace lost heat. With salt water in our mouths from swimming in the sea, the orange juice was absolutely disgusting, beef broth was bad, and hot chocolate was a real mistake because it contained milk solids, which were known to make swimmers nauseated. We narrowed our choices to coffee, tea, and hot cider.
That morning, we swam against a slight current, less than half a knot, as we headed south along the California shore, past Surfside and Sunset Beach. The sky was cerulean blue, without a single cloud, and the summer sun was warm on our shoulders. When we made the turn at Bolsa Chica beach, the wind started blowing across the sea, piling the water into half-foot waves. Not only was swimming directly into the chop tiring, it was hard to breathe because we were getting so much spray in our faces and we were swallowing seawater. Nancy began to feel seasick and cold. Ron urged her to stay in the water, and he told us to pick up our pace. The wind increased to fifteen knots. Short, fast waves smashed over our heads. Nancy, who was thinner than the rest of us, was complaining and shivering in the water. Ron recognized that she might be going into the first stage of hypothermia; her body temperature was probably dropping from the prolonged exposure to sixty-eight-degree water. He finally stopped and pulled her out. He was not happy. It was tough work rowing against the waves, and he was disappointed in the team’s performance.
I kept working hard, enjoying it, drawing from every experience, learning how to feel the rhythm of the ocean, hear the tempo of the waves, and dance with the water using my balance, my strength, and all my senses. The waves grew louder and stronger. I improvised, adjusted the pitch of my hand, changed the rate of my strokes, and pressed my head deeper into the water so I could move through the waves instead of using more energy to bounce up and over them.
That training swim took us nearly five hours, and by the time we rounded the Seal Beach Pier Ron was so tired and annoyed with us, he said he would wait to discuss what happened the next day at morning workout.
I waited apprehensively until the next morning. At our team meeting, Ron came down hard on us. “How can you expect to swim the Catalina Channel if you can’t even make a ten-mile workout in a little chop? What are you going to do, give up? What are you going to do when you hit a current in the channel, swim at the same speed? This swim was nothing compared to what you’re going to face in the Catalina Channel. And it wasn’t even half the distance. You know that. You’re probably going to swim a lot more than twenty-one miles with the current changes. If you’re going to do this, you’re going to have to work a lot harder. You’ve got to be more focused, more determined. You’ve got to be willing to fight for this. You’ve got to be able to be cold and fight through it. You’ve got to be able to be tired and push harder. You’ve just got to change your attitude. If you don’t want to do it, tell me now, so I won’t waste my time. Is that clear?” His voice boomed and it was filled with underlying anger and exasperation.
No one said a word. Our heads were bowed. I stared at my feet.
Ron continued: “You’re only giving a sixty percent effort. You have to give one hundred percent every workout. You need to realize you’ve only got one month remaining to prepare. I don’t want to be the bad guy,” he said, softening his tone, “but this is the reality.”
We thought he was going to blast us with a hard workout that morning. Instead, he said, “I want you to swim two miles, warm down, and then go home and think about what I’ve said.” Then he turned to me and said, “You’re really going to have to do something about those cuts along your neck and, I bet, along your sides or they’re going to get infected. I am not going to tell you you have to do this, but I think you’ll be doing yourself a favor if you swim without your top.”
I no longer cared about modesty. The nylon bathing suit straps had cut deep bloody gashes on either side of my neck and chafed my underarms so badly that I had to keep my arms slightly out at my sides so that the skin under my arms wouldn’t touch anything, because it would stick together and then bleed when I pulled the skin apart. The sheer mileage and abrasive salt water had also caused my nylon swimsuit to cut bleeding holes on either side of my chest. Taking a shower had been awful. When I pulled my pajama top over my head, the top stuck to the wounds and I had to rip the skin to get it off.
All of us were pretty glum after the workout that morning. When we returned the next morning, we were ready to start anew, with more focus than before.
For the next two weeks we intensified our workouts, and since Ron had basically given us
the green light to swim at our own speed, I no longer held back. I challenged Stacey, Dennis, and Andy, the faster members on the team. Andy and I would usually break away from the others and race each other to finish first. He had been the fastest swimmer in the group, and now I was faster. Toward the end of the workout I’d leave him behind. On a mile swim, I’d finish two or three minutes ahead of the team. I wanted to make this swim, and I wanted to be prepared, so I gave my best effort every day.
It was understood that we would swim across the Catalina Channel together. That meant we would pace one another and stay with one another from the start to the finish of the crossing. But now that Ron had given me the freedom to go at full speed during workouts, it was as if before I was trotting and now I was galloping across the surface of the sea.
Ron was pleased with our progress, but he was getting a lot of outside interference. People were questioning his rationale. How could he even think of taking six teenage kids across the Catalina Channel? Didn’t he realize how far it was? Didn’t he recognize how dangerous it could be?
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 to sleep in the bunks, but we were far too excited to do anything other than chatter loudly over the drone of the boat’s engines. From the deck above, we heard snatches of conversation, Ron’s voice and the crew’s discussing how the swim would be coordinated. We knew we were heading into Divers Cove when Dr. Fresonske cut the boat’s engine and we heard someone shout, “Drop the anchor.” It hit the water with an enormous splash, and all of us raced up the stairs to get to the deck so we could see where we had stopped.
The sun was beating down on the water, the glare so strong that it was hard to see the cove. It appeared to be small and well sheltered by low cliffs covered with shrubs. Except for one small boat, there was no one else in the area. A strong breeze, maybe five knots, was ruffling the water and that intensified our mood. We were not certain whether we would swim that evening; it all depended on having good weather. August was usually a fairly calm time in the Catalina Channel, but anything could happen.
This uncertainty put us a little on edge, and knowing that we had to wait until midnight heightened our anxiousness and excitement. Andy, Dennis, and Nancy decided to put on their swimsuits and paddle over to the island to explore. Stacey and I decided to go back below and try to sleep. We knew we were going to have a very long night. And I didn’t want to waste any energy now.
I crawled back into one of the bunks, put a pillow over my head, closed out all sounds, and took my mind away. Time passed—I’m not sure how much—and when I awoke, Mrs. Fresonske was offering us large bowls of chili filled with beans and beef for dinner. It was delicious, but it was not a good choice for a long-distance swim. At that time, carbo-loading and the reasons for it hadn’t been discovered.
At about ten p.m. Ron gathered us in the cabin and explained how we would coordinate with the crew.
The boat we were on would be positioned about a half mile ahead of us. We would use the lights on board the boat as navigational guides. While floodlights would have helped us see the boat better, the crew was afraid that a lot of light would attract fish, and decided to use only the cabin light and the small red and green lights on the bow and stern.
We would be swimming in a V formation, like a flock of pelicans. We would swim using the English Channel Association rules. We would wear only bathing suits, bathing caps, and goggles—no thermal swimsuits or thermal hoods or fins. We would tread water or float when we needed to rest. We were not allowed any type of artificial support or flotation. And we could not touch anyone on the boat at any time during the swim or we would be disqualified. That meant that our food and drinks had to be tossed to us; we hoped none of the food spent too long in the salt water before we recovered it.
Ron positioned me at the top of the V, with Andy on one side of me and Stacey on the other. Dennis would swim beside Andy and Nancy would swim on the outside of Stacey. It was strange and sad that Ron didn’t mention Dale. She had caught the flu. She and Ron had discussed the option of postponing the swim, but she didn’t want to hold us back, and she’d called that morning to wish us the best of luck.
Ron said that Mr. Yeo, one of the Seal Beach team fathers, would be riding a paddleboard beside Dennis and a Seal Beach lifeguard would be paddling a kayak on the outside of Nancy. Every hour or so the lifeguards would trade off with
the four lifeguards in the main boat.
The dory rowed by Lyle Johnson and John Stockwell would precede us by about twenty-five yards. They would row the entire distance across the channel and would have a small white light on their stern to guide us. Our paddlers and kayakers would strap small flashlights to their boards and kayak so we could see them during the swim.
At eleven p.m. Stockwell and Johnson began shuttling us ashore in their dory. When I climbed into the boat Stockwell and Johnson began rowing, and with each pull on the oars, I felt my excitement growing. The night was so black we could just see the waves break along the shore. Beyond that it was utter blackness. Guided only by voices, I reached the starting area, where I jumped out into ankle-deep water and searched for my teammates.
“We’re over here—come this way!” Stacey shouted, her voice echoing off the invisible cliff walls. Guided by a pinpoint of light from one of the flashlights, I stumbled on some rocks and slid on what I hoped was a clump of kelp.
The light grew brighter, and I saw Mrs. Fresonske holding the flashlight. Stacey, wearing pink Playtex gloves, was grabbing handfuls of Vaseline and slathering them on her neck.
“Here you go.” Stacey giggled, picking up one of the five tubs of goo and tossing it to me. “Need some gloves?”
“No, thanks, I’m fine,” I said. Using my ring finger and my pinky I dug out a glob of Vaseline, careful not to get any on my other fingers. I would need to keep them clean so I could adjust my goggles. If they were smeared with goo, I wouldn’t be able to see anything. I spread the stuff around my neck, armpits, and the leg holes of my swimsuit. Then I checked the wide elastic band around my waist, making sure it was taut so I could drop my straps but not lose my swimsuit during the crossing.
Nancy joined us. She found her jar and covered her arms and legs with the stuff. Andy and Dennis were standing somewhere nearby; we could hear them laughing and slapping handfuls of Vaseline on each other. When they were finished they were covered from their necks to their ankles in slime.
