Swimming to Antarctica

by Lynne Cox

  From the boat Monir’s coach was shouting at him, but Monir was breathing only in my direction so that he didn’t have to look at his coach. But I could see the coach, and he was going nuts.

  “I can’t hold this speed,” I said, lifting my head so he could hear me.

  “Just try,” Monir said, and eased back.

  When I turned to breathe, there was a Syrian swimmer gaining on us.

  “Come on, pick it up,” Monir said.

  My arms weren’t responding.

  Monir slowed down. His coach was screaming at the top of his lungs. He was pointing at the Syrian swimmer, trying to get Monir’s attention to let him know that the Syrian was moving in.

  “You’ve got to go now; you’ve got a guy right behind you,” I said.

  “Try harder,” he coaxed. He knew, as all long-distance swimmers do, that if you keep going you can usually break through the wall. You get a second, a third, and even a tenth wind.

  Every part of me wanted to stay with him. “You’ve got to go now or you’ll lose this race.”

  He glanced back. “Okay, I’ll see you at the finish,” he said.

  “Don’t worry—I’ll come up from behind and catch you before that,” I joked, knowing there was no way I would ever catch him that day.

  “See you soon,” he said, cranking up his speed and leaving me in his wake. When he rounded the top of the figure eight, I lost sight of him. Stopping, I drank some apple juice. My stomach cramped. I tossed the juice bottle back into the rowboat and wearily I put my head down. I was so cold I was shivering hard in the water. Slowly we rounded the top of the figure eight.

  I tried to use whatever I could to motivate myself: You’re the only American in the race. You’ve got to do this. Keep going.

  An Italian and a Greek swimmer passed; I could tell by their flags. I tried to reach down within myself, but there was nothing there. “Dave, I can’t do this,” I said, surprised I had uttered those words.

  He tried to convince me to keep swimming, and I did, for another few hundred yards. Then I started to slow down, but there were some kids on the riverbank and they began throwing rocks at us. It seemed unbelievable at first, but it became very clear that they were aiming for us when they hit Dave in the shoulder and the pilot on the head. A shower of rocks hit the water. Dave told me to me to sprint, and I did, but we continued to be pelted. Fortunately, a couple of army officers who were on the shore for crowd control saw what was happening and grabbed the kids by their shirts and hauled them away.

  My stomach cramped so hard that I started crying. “I can’t do this. I don’t feel good.”

  “Okay okay swim over to the boat. You can get out,” he said.

  I looked at him leaning over, reaching for me, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t disqualify myself, couldn’t give up. “I’m okay now. I can keep going,” I said as my stomach cramped again and I lost all sense of balance in the water. I was listing to one side as I swam.

  Dave stopped me and insisted that I drink some juice to boost my blood-sugar levels. Floating on my back, I squeezed the liquid into my mouth and watched a couple of girls from Egypt pass me. I didn’t care anymore.

  I managed to hold on for another quarter of a mile, but my stomach started cramping again, so hard I couldn’t breathe. I cried into the water so no one would see me. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I do this? My stomach cramped again and I felt the world shut down inside, and I got scared. “Dave, I don’t feel good; I can’t go any farther. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” I said, and I slapped the water in frustration. I’d never slapped the water before; I’d never cried in the water; and I’d never felt so bad.

  “Okay, get out, okay, come here, let me help you out,” he said.

  “Just a little more. I’ll try just a little more,” I said, and took some strokes. I couldn’t feel my arms. The cramps were coming one right after the other now, and I couldn’t focus. I was falling over, going down.

  “Here, take my hand,” Dave said urgently.

  There was that moment, that horrible, terrible moment, when I knew I had to touch his hand and disqualify myself. Even then, I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to give up. It was so strange. I could feel myself slipping away. I reached up for his hand and let him grab my wrist. Somehow it seemed better that way, letting him disqualify me, rather than me doing it to myself. There was something so awful in giving up. But once he held my wrist, I just let go of myself. I let my face fall into the water, felt myself being dragged toward the boat. I was choking on that thick water, and then they were lifting me into the boat. I shut my eyes. I didn’t want to see where I was or what was happening. I could feel Dave holding my head in the boat. He was talking to me. I couldn’t understand what he was saying. My stomach hurt so much. I couldn’t open my eyes. Everything hurt so much.

  Dave and some other people dragged me from the boat, loaded me onto a stretcher and then into an ambulance that he later said looked like a milk truck. As we sped to the hospital I faded in and out of consciousness. It was hot outside, but I was so cold, I was shaking hard.

  Sirens blared as we raced through Cairo’s streets, and Dave held on to me so I wouldn’t flip over in the back of the ambulance. I pressed my fists into my stomach to block the cramping, clenched my jaw so I wouldn’t scream, and squeezed my eyes shut. Somehow I pushed my mind away, detached myself, found comfort in the gray space, the netherworld between consciousness and unconsciousness. I wanted to remain there—not think, not feel, not know anything.

  “Is she allergic to any medication?” The doctor was speaking to Dave.

  “No, nothing,” he said.

  “When did she last eat?”

  “Ten days ago.”

  “Ten days?”

  “She’s had dysentery for that time. She’s had some apple and some orange juice.”

  “Is she taking medication for it?”

  “Yes, but she only started yesterday.” Dave’s voice sounded small and scared. I was sorry to put him through this, sorry I had not finished, and sorry I failed. I wanted to tell him I would be okay, but I didn’t think I would ever be okay again. I couldn’t control my body or my emotions.

  “We’re going to give her some muscle relaxers, some glucose and electrolytes, and see how she does with that. Then we will start her on some medication for the gastrointestinal infection,” the doctor said, adding something in Arabic for the emergency team.

  Someone stuck a needle into my vein, and I slid blissfully away into the gray space. Time passed, I don’t know how much, but after a while I heard Rick Field talking to Dave: “The doctor gave her three injections for the abdominal cramps and a strong sedative. He’s replacing her fluids now. She’s lucky he used new needles. They usually have to reuse old ones.”

  The doctor said, “She was dangerously dehydrated and her heart rate was over two hundred. She was hypothermic from her condition. The electric blanket is helping her get back to a normal temperature. She seems to be relaxing now, but we will keep her overnight for observation.” He patted me gently on the cheek.

  “Thank you very much,” I said to him, and saw him smile. Then I turned to Dave and asked, “How far did I swim?”

  “A little more than fifteen miles,” he said.

  Tears welled up in my eyes. I hated not finishing.

  The doctor leaned over the table, touched me on the cheek again, and wiped away the tears. “What did she say?”

  Rick told him, and with utter exasperation the doctor said, “Doesn’t she realize she was in a life-threatening situation? Doesn’t she realize she went too far, way too far?” He shook his head with disbelief.

  While we were in the hospital, Monir finished the Nile race. For the last five miles he held the Syrian swimmer off, and he won. The crowd carried him around the finish line on their shoulders. They were jubilant: the hometown favorite, the captain of the Egyptian team, had won. He was very happy, but when he discovered that I was in the hospital, he jum
ped into a cab, still in his wet swimsuit, to find me. But I had convinced the doctor to release me from the hospital and was back at the hotel resting.

  I saw Monir the next evening at a celebration dinner. He was talking with his teammates, and when he saw me, he immediately excused himself. He said he was glad to see me and had been afraid that I wouldn’t come to the party. He invited me to have dinner with him at a table with a group of men who were in their late seventies and eighties. It seemed strange to me that Monir chose to sit with them rather than the younger swimmers, but it was his way of paying homage to the older men, because he had learned from them, and by winning the Nile race he had joined their ranks. Monir had asked me to join him there because he knew they would welcome me too, for my swims across the English Channel.

  I discovered the other reason why Monir had selected this particular table: here, we could talk without being overheard, and he wanted to hold my hand under the table. He did it very slowly, touching my fingers gently, asking me if it was okay for him to touch my hand. My every nerve ending seemed to feel his hand and respond to it. Ever so slowly I traced the outline of his hand with my fingertips, and then we simply held hands and felt the beating of our hearts within our hands. I had never held someone’s hand like that before.

  Candlelight danced in his eyes, and when he smiled, I was so happy.

  “Will you come back to race in the Nile next year?” he asked.

  “No, I don’t think I ever want to swim in the Nile again,” I said, flinching.

  “Then I don’t think I will see you again,” he said, his voice heavy.

  “Don’t worry, I’m sure someday we will meet at an ocean or a swimming pool,” I said.

  We sat beside each other on the bus back to the hotel. I was very close to him, leaning against his side. I still felt so fragile. Somehow Monir understood it all, and he held my hand again.

  “You know, during the race I thought about what you said and it really helped me. You will always be a champion; you will always do your best. Nothing more than that can ever be expected. I learned that myself. But you can’t learn everything at once. It takes time,” he said gently.

  I slid my arm around his back and hugged him. It was not acceptable behavior in a public place like a bus, but fortunately, the bus was dark. He turned and faced me and we just hugged.

  It didn’t make any sense, but my feelings for him were deep, unlike anything I’d ever felt before.

  I think I had fallen in love with him. And I think he had the same feelings for me. There were big smiles on our faces and tears in our eyes when we parted.

  9

  Lost in the Fog

  Within my first couple weeks of being home, I got my first letter from Monir. I was so happy to hear from him. In barely a week and a half, he had made an enormous impression on my life. I thought about him all the time and wondered how he was, what he was doing. Until that point, I had never been that caught up in someone else, but from what I’d seen, I knew he was someone special. So I wrote and told him how happy I was to hear from him, that I had recovered physically from my experience, that I had returned to high school and finished out the year with my studies and swimming for the girls’ swim team. Then I explained to him that I wanted to continue with my long-distance swimming. It had always bothered me that I could have broken the Catalina record, so I’d decided that I wanted to attempt it again.

  A month passed. It was the summer of 1974, and nothing had really changed in a big way. I was still seventeen, living the same life: getting up, going to work out, seeing friends in the neighborhood, working out again in the afternoon, going to movies. But when Monir’s second letter arrived from Egypt, and I opened it, the whole world seemed suddenly to be cast in a new, warm, vibrant light. Everything around me was blooming, awakening, and intensely beautiful. I read his letter at least five times, then put it away in my desk drawer with the first one, so I could read them again sometime.

  He said he had decided to take a coaching position and he was very excited about that choice. I told him that I was about to swim the Catalina Channel. With Coach Gambril at Harvard and Dave on his way to college, for a brief time I had continued swimming for what had been Gambril’s team. The name had been changed to the Long Beach Team. I’d swum for the new coach, Dick Jochums, but we did not mesh at all. So I’d changed teams and started training with Jim Montrella at the Lakewood Aquatic Club.

  At midnight, my support crew assembled: my father and mother, Fahmy; John Stockwell and Lyle Johnson, the veteran lifeguards who had accompanied the Seal Beach Swim Team crew three years earlier; Mickey Pitman, who would pilot the Bandito; John Sonnichsen, who had worked with other channel swimmers and had volunteered to help with this swim; Mr. Yeo, who had also been along on the previous crossing; Jim Montrella; Lynn Simross from the Los Angeles Times; and a combination of Seal Beach and Long Beach lifeguards. At the last minute Pat, a local pool swimming coach and a friend of one of the lifeguards, volunteered to help paddle. He was a surfer but had no experience in open-water swims. We pushed off from Santa Catalina Island and headed for the California coast.

  The wind was down, the sea was calmly reflecting the heavens, and I was swimming very strongly, gliding with each stroke, like a skater sliding across the ice. Everything seemed to be just right.

  After four hours of swimming, fog began slowly drifting into the channel. Clouds connected into long bands so that at times the lead boat was completely obscured. It made me feel a little uneasy, and Stockwell and Johnson, in the dory, felt that way too. Stockwell got on the walkie-talkie and suggested that Mickey move the Bandito closer.

  It took him just a couple of minutes to turn the Bandito around, but the fog had become so thick that we couldn’t see him at all. Instinctively I moved closer to Pat, on the paddleboard. Stockwell continued talking on the walkie-talkie, giving Mickey our compass heading. When I turned my head to breathe, the dory suddenly disappeared into the fog. Pat and I tried calling to Stockwell and Johnson, but they couldn’t hear us. Pat pulled the flashlight off his paddleboard and shone it into the clouds. To our horror, the light only reflected back at us. There was no way anyone anywhere would see it, except for us. At that moment it became very clear that we were lost in the fog, in the middle of the night, in the center of the Catalina Channel.

  Foghorns bellowed around us, their deep voices coming from all different directions and distances; some were louder, others softer, punctuating the darkness with deep, rumbling moans. And as the fog descended into the channel, the moaning grew louder and more frequent, until we were encircled by phantom voices, so that we became disoriented by the sounds.

  A few minutes earlier I had seen light beams from a lighthouse somewhere out there, but the flashes had dimmed, and now there was nothing at all. I was doing everything I could to remain calm, to be optimistic, until the bow waves from the tankers and freighters started hitting us. They came out of nowhere, and some were ten or twelve feet high. We could hear the ships’ horns blaring, sending out warnings; they were so close they hurt our ears. But there was nothing we could do. There would be a pause between the warning and the wave, and then suddenly we’d be lifted up off the surface of the earth, it seemed, into the clouds. Scrambling to stay beside Pat, I’d fight back the feeling of panic. I was so afraid that I would lose Pat on a wave in the black fog or be crushed by a tanker. The tanker waves kept hitting us from different directions, so it was hard to tell which way to move, where to go so we wouldn’t be run over. We tried to move in one direction only to be hit by another set of waves. Then Pat got caught on the crest of a wave; he was lifted into the fog, and I was in the trough, so I couldn’t see him or the board. On the verge of panic, he shouted to me at the top of his lungs, though his voice was muffled by the clouds: “Stay with me. I’m here. Right here. Move this way.”

  The wave lifted me up and I looked down into the black cloud, terrified beyond anything ever before. “I’m here. Right here,” I said, feeling my
fear rise as the wave lifted me higher, straining to see him through the black drape of fog. There was nothing that I could use as a reference point, nothing to connect me to earth—no lights on the water, no moonlight, no starlight, nothing. Everything had been smothered by fog. Even my breaths were short and labored. I felt like I was trying to breathe through a cold, wet towel.

  Pat was somewhere down there, in the wave trough, still shouting, although I couldn’t make out his words anymore. The clarity was gone—all I could hear were muffled sounds. Then I heard a ship’s engine. It was deep, close. Putting my head well into a wave, I listened intently for the engine sounds, hoping I could figure out which way the ship was moving, hoping I could move out of the way in time so I wouldn’t be sucked in by the ship’s engines, hoping I wouldn’t be cut in half by the huge propellers, hoping that Pat would choose the right direction, hoping that I would find him again. So much time passed in those moments.

  Then it happened so fast: I felt a deep, powerful stream of cold bubbles and a current churning around me, dragging me toward it, pulling me down. It was the slipstream of the tanker. I tried to pull away, to sprint, but there was nothing I could do to match the force of that current. It dragged me backward and then released me.

  With the passing of the ship, there was a pause in the waves. All the while, Pat and I had been shouting off and on to each other. Somehow we found each other. That in itself was a miracle. Now the question was what to do next. We couldn’t sit in the shipping lane and be run over by a tanker, but we couldn’t swim off into the fog either. Pat wanted to keep going, but I didn’t think that was a good idea. He had no nautical experience, and I tried to explain that when people were lost in the fog, they tended to make a huge circle, and perhaps become more lost. I thought we should stay put. He didn’t agree. He told me that I had to continue swimming, that I needed to keep going so I could break the record. But that seemed so unimportant now.