Swimming to Antarctica

by Lynne Cox

  That same afternoon I received a phone call from David Karp, from the Nome Visitors and Travelers Bureau. He had contacted Evergreen Helicopters, and they said that they might be able to help with transportation for the swim if we were willing to fly out with the mail. Otherwise we would have to charter the helicopter, and that would be a minimum of five thousand dollars per flight. Flying out with the mail sounded like a great option, since I couldn’t afford chartering the helicopter.

  A day after I arrived in Nome, I met with David Karp at the visitors bureau and set his office up as the place to take calls from reporters and from my brain-trust team. After I finished making the calls, a man named Larry Maine introduced himself. He knew David Karp and said that he was a fisherman from Petersburg, Alaska, who’d come to Nome to dredge and sift the beach sand for gold. He camped on the beach and dressed in worn-out clothes. There was a lot of time and weather etched in his face, but he seemed very kind, and that day he offered to walk on the beach with me as I swam. He did it every day, even when it was raining, or there were fierce winds, or even sandstorms. I remember asking him why he had volunteered and he said that sometimes you just need to have someone with you, to know that he cares. Although I never told him, I think he knew how much it meant to have him walk beside me. There were days when I didn’t want to swim, especially during the sandstorms, but I knew Larry would be waiting for me. He not only inspired me, he also represented all those people who had sent me their prayers and best wishes.

  Person by person, the support was growing. Then Claire Richardson, a reporter from KNOM radio station, began doing daily updates about the planned swim. Soon KICY and other radio stations in Alaska started picking up the story, then radio stations in southern California. The Los Angeles Times ran a series of stories. Then the Orange County Register joined in, then the Seattle Times and the Anchorage Daily News. Then CNN did a story, and all the network television stations began calling. The media was intrigued with the idea. But they all knew that nothing counted unless we managed to get the Soviets to open the border. And then I’d have to make the swim.

  The phone was ringing as David Karp and I entered the Nome visitors center. It was Gene Fisher, Bob Walsh’s assistant. Walsh was in Moscow organizing the Goodwill Games and was meeting with Soviet officials. Fisher sounded excited. He had heard from the Soviets. They had sent a telex requesting the names of our crew members, their dates and places of birth, and their passport numbers. The Soviets also wanted to know if there was anything in particular we would need at the end of the swim. I requested blankets, a hot-water bottle, hot drinks, and a babushka. I later learned that babushka in Russian means grandmother, not, as it has come to mean in English, a brightly colored shawl or scarf. The “babushka,” I thought, would identify us as landing in the Soviet Union and it would symbolize the brightness and warmth of our meeting.

  I asked Gene if this meant that we had Soviet permission. He said it didn’t, but we were making progress.

  Whatever it meant, to me it felt like a warm breeze was stirring around us after a very long, cold, hard winter—a promise that the ice would thaw and spring would arrive. But we were less than three weeks away from the target date.

  My hand was shaking as I dialed Bruce Evans at Senator Murkowski’s office. He had just spoken with the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., and they hadn’t heard anything from Moscow, but he promised to keep the pressure on. He would convey the news to Senator Murkowski and he would ask the senator to put a call in to the Soviet ambassador in Washington with the hope that Ambassador Dobrynin’s inquiry would prod Moscow to provide further information and even commitment. Meanwhile, Ed Salazar would check with the State Department and send another prompt to our embassy in Moscow with a request that they touch base with the Soviet Foreign Ministry.

  18

  Mind-Blowing

  Joe Novella, an ABC television producer, called and said that ABC wanted to take a gamble. They wanted to cover the story with or without Soviet approval. They planned to run a preswim story as well as one during the swim, and immediately afterward they wanted to fly me to New York City for an interview. If President Gorbachev didn’t know about the project by now, we could send him the news story with the hope that it would help persuade him to grant me a visa.

  From an elevation of a thousand feet, the Alaskan tundra rolled out before us in a tapestry of red mosses, white lichen, jade shrubs, and emerald grasses. Woven throughout the land’s contours were brightly colored wildflowers, silvery blueberry bushes, and countless clear rippling brooks and streams. In the warm, intense arctic light the land sparkled and vibrated with energy and life.

  Joe Novella and Randy Tolbin, his cameraman; our pilot; and I flew north by northwest, skirting the North American continent, bound for Wales, Alaska, the jumping-off point for Little Diomede Island. Crosswinds shook, turned, twisted, and jarred the plane. Looking at the pilot, I wondered how he kept us in the air. He saw me and turned slightly in his seat, grinned, and said, “Don’t worry, it will smooth out after we pass the mountains. You know, I think what you’re attempting is great, and I am very happy I’m the one getting you to your starting point.”

  As we rounded the foothills of the York Mountains, our small Cessna cast a tiny, bouncing shadow on the wide golden hills. There was great contrast—we were dwarfed by the magnitude of the environment, yet there was something so expansive about Alaska, something that infused the soul, that made you believe you could reach enormous dreams. It might be because the land in Alaska is so open, untouched, wilder than wild, and bigger than any imagination can hold; or it might be that the colossal size of the mountains, like the Brooks Range in the northern part of the state, matches the way Alaskans think. They carry with them a pioneering attitude, a belief that impossible things are possible.

  From Anchorage to Nome, and now to Wales, whenever Alaskans heard about our plans, they did what many others hadn’t—they immediately embraced and supported the idea of swimming the Bering Strait, and that was truly inspiring. They made me feel the way our pilot did that day, like we were finally on the right path at the right time.

  As we rounded some foothills, suddenly off to the left were sparkling, deep, lapis-blue waters. There it was! After eleven years of dreaming, working, and believing, I was seeing it for the very first time in real life, the Bering Sea. I stared at it, trying to match up what I had envisioned in my mind’s eye with the reality of what I was seeing. It was almost too much to comprehend. Yes, there it was—the Bering Sea. It was right below us, so blue, so vast, so wild, so beautiful and awesome. And somewhere in the middle of all that blue were Little Diomede and Big Diomede. We were getting closer, and my spirits were soaring high over the sea.

  Studying the water more closely, I tried to tell how high the waves were. But I had no way to gauge distance or height from the air, so I asked the pilot. Rapidly breaking waves, four to five feet high, covered the Bering Sea to the horizon. This was typical weather, and that was sobering information. With only one week remaining before my proposed departure for the swim, we still hoped that we would hear from the navy or coast guard and that they would support the swim. There was a good chance that the water would be much rougher in the middle of the Bering Strait. We had to have a safety net.

  To our right, on the very edge of the Bering Sea, in a flat section of land between the foothills, was the village of Wales. Thirty small, dark wooden homes were clustered together around an unusual community center: a three-story-high building painted snow-white and shaped like an igloo.

  The pilot fought strong crosswinds and landed us on the runway. As we stepped out of the plane, he said another pilot would meet us for the return flight, then radioed Eric Pentilla, our helicopter pilot to Little Diomede. The weather was very unstable in a village to the north of us, so he would have to wait to see if it would be possible for him to take off. In the meantime, we were invited to stay at the community center.

  A local villager driving a beat-u
p old van gave us a lift into town. We drove along a narrow dirt road past small, storm-worn homes, most with plastic tarps for windows and doors. I imagined how cold and how difficult it must be to live there all year long. None of the homes had fireplaces, and there were no trees; I wondered if they had electricity or any way to heat their homes. In their backyards were clotheslines covered with the black drying carcasses of walruses and seabirds, and some backyards had satellite dishes. The village looked so small and fragile against the great expanse of land and sea.

  At the community center, a young Inuit woman with a long black ponytail greeted us and invited us up to the third floor. As we climbed upstairs, we saw a group of teenagers playing pool and talking. The young woman led us to an office and offered us hot coffee. She explained that about 150 people lived in Wales. The men in the village were primarily walrus hunters. They and their families ate the meat, and they carved the tusks and sold them to tourists in Nome and Anchorage, or used the scrimshaw as money in trade. She was very interested in what we were doing and said that we were welcome to stay the night if the weather did not improve.

  For three hours we waited, pacing the edge of the Bering Strait in an icy cold wind. Finally, we heard from Eric Pentilla. He would wait another hour. If the weather conditions improved, he would pick us up, but if they didn’t, he would have to fly to another village to deliver mail and supplies. That would mean that we would be delayed in Wales for a day, maybe more. Everything in Alaska seemed to depend upon the whim of the weather.

  Another hour passed and we began making plans to spend the night. Then we heard the throb of helicopter engines. The van driver explained we had to hurry. This was only a break in the weather, and we had to get out of town immediately. Clambering into his van again, we were taken to a flat piece of land at the edge of the village, where Pentilla was waiting. Quickly we loaded the helicopter and climbed in. Pentilla, who looks like Harrison Ford but taller, handed us headphones and told us—so quickly that I wanted him to repeat it—what to do if he had to ditch the helicopter in the Bering Sea. He said there were life jackets under our seats, flares, and an emergency kit. But the sense of his message was: I’m telling you this because I have to. In reality, your survival time in these waters is five to ten minutes maximum, and there are no rescue boats between Wales and Little Diomede, so you don’t need to worry. If the helicopter crashes, you will die.

  Pentilla opened the throttle, checked his watch, and said that if we made it to Little Diomede, we wouldn’t have much time there; it was late, and he had been flying all day. He flicked a series of switches; spoke into the radio, telling someone somewhere about our destination; did a quick visual inspection; got a weather update; and opened the throttle further. The engine sound heightened, the helicopter trembled, and we lifted off.

  This was my first helicopter ride, and sitting there inside the glass dome, I felt like I was riding inside an enormous bubble. Sunlight poured into the cockpit, warming it to at least eighty degrees. Everything inside the bubble sparkled. Once through the cloud layer, we floated across the intense blue sky with a puffy white carpet rolling out before us as far as the eye could see.

  Finally, after eleven years of dreaming about Little and Big Diomede, I would see the islands, and I couldn’t wait to get out there. But the cockpit was so warm and the air was calm, and I was enjoying every second of the experience.

  At the edge of the horizon, there was a great hole in the cloud carpet. Circling the hole and tipping the helicopter forward, Pentilla looked straight down. Then he pulled back up, deciding where to descend. When he started down it suddenly felt as if we were free-falling into a giant vortex. It was as if a great whirlpool in the air were sucking us down, shaking and twisting us like we were in a coffee grinder. The helicopter itself seemed to be screaming and hollering as the blades tried to hold on to unstable air. Pentilla clenched the joystick and tried to control it. “It’s a little bumpier than I expected,” he said, his voice shaking from the helicopter’s vibrations.

  The wind was plummeting into us so hard that I wondered if it would project our bodies through the glass bubble. Just ahead of us, to our right, emerging from the clouds and mist, was Little Diomede, a cone-shaped volcanic island, rocky and green and seeming to bound up and down on a viscous sea.

  “I’m going to try to descend to two hundred feet,” Pentilla shouted.

  The wind gusts were shifting us from side to side. It was as if we were riding at the tip of a nervous dog’s wagging tail. Pentilla fought to hold the helicopter in a straight line, but he couldn’t control the aircraft in the windstorm. He couldn’t descend farther. Suddenly a gust caught the helicopter and tossed us down to within fifty feet of the sea. Fear registered on Pentilla’s face.

  The waves right below the helicopter’s runners were large. I couldn’t tell how high they were, but they were creating choppy air, and the helicopter wasn’t responding to Pentilla’s commands. Holding on tight, we watched Pentilla and felt the waves pulling us down. Suddenly, to our left, the wind lifted a cloud bank like a huge curtain, and there was Big Diomede—the Soviet Union, less than three miles away. I was too focused on what we were doing at that moment to be excited. Only the image registered—Oh, there’s the island. The clearer thought was, Are we going to make it down alive?

  Pentilla shouted to us over the radio, “We’re going to try to land on that barge.”

  The barge was a rusting old ship that had sunk during a storm. The upper section of the ship had been cut off and transformed into a landing ramp. From our position, the barge was the size of a postage stamp. But the island itself was composed of black rocks and boulders; there was no alternative place to land.

  “Eric, will you be landing?” a man’s voice asked over the radio. “The wind’s from the southwest at forty to forty-five knots.” It seemed like the man strongly questioned Pentilla’s actions. But so far, all Pentilla had done was show us that he was an incredible pilot.

  “Yes, that’s an affirmative,” he said.

  The wind was bouncing us and shaking us radically. Pentilla dropped the nose slightly, and just as we reached the barge, eight feet above the landing area, a huge gust tossed us to the left, way off target. Quickly Pentilla added throttle; the helicopter teetered between flying and falling. Somehow we surged upward.

  Pentilla made a second attempt, but the wind tossed us nearly sideways, into the island.

  “I’ll try one more time. If we don’t get down this time, we’ll have to turn back. We don’t have enough fuel to make another attempt,” Pentilla said.

  Our necks were snapping from side to side, and I wished I had gotten more out of Pentilla’s safety demonstration.

  We circled around and descended again. To our right, we could see tiny, brightly painted houses on stilts built into the hillside of the extinct volcano. Below us were two men bent over against the wind, signaling Pentilla with flashlights. He dropped to ten feet above the barge and hovered, waiting for a moment to center the helicopter. Slammed sideways by a wind gust, we dangled over the water.

  For a split second I hoped that Pentilla would abort the attempt; but he waited, felt the wind, held out for a pause, maneuvered the helicopter into position, crabbed sideways, and set us down.

  We cheered and then sat there, unable to speak, while two villagers latched the helicopter’s runners to the dredge so it wouldn’t be blown into the sea. Then Pentilla let out a deep breath and grinned. We slapped him on the shoulder. He grinned again and admitted that the landing had been more difficult than he’d anticipated.

  When I stepped out of the warm bubble, a blast of cold arctic air nearly blew me off the barge and into the water. Waves were crashing close by, over a small breakwater. One of the villagers, a young woman, grabbed my hand and guided me to a place where I could climb down onto the rocks and land.

  Once there, I turned around and looked at the Bering Sea. I was horrified. It was rougher than any ocean I had ever seen. Rougher than
the Strait of Magellan, rougher than the Cape of Good Hope, rougher than anything I had ever dreamed in my worst nightmares. I couldn’t register what I was seeing. It can’t be like this, I thought. How is this ever going to work? There was no way a walrus-skin boat or even a navy ship could navigate these waters without sinking. Staring across at Big Diomede, I thought, That island is only 2.7 miles from us, but it might as well be a million. At that moment I felt farther from the crossing than I had in eleven years.

  Novella, Tolbin, and Pentilla joined me on the beach. The air was frigid, it felt like it was going to snow, and the wind was blowing so fiercely we had to shout into each other’s ears. Tolbin pulled a cap over his red hair. His blue eyes were tearing up from the cold. He asked me if I was going to train along a ten-yard-long strip of beach.

  It wasn’t safe to train even three feet from shore. The current was so strong that it would whisk me out to sea. “It’s too rough,” I said.