Swimming to Antarctica

by Lynne Cox

  “We could smuggle it out in Lynne’s bathing suit,” Rich Roberts suggested.

  As Kelley twirled some spaghetti around his fork, he said, “You know, it would be very dramatic, especially if they sent gunboats to meet us. I doubt they’d put us in prison. It would look bad for Gorbachev and his new policy of openness.”

  “He’s right. Lynne, you’ve trained a long time for this,” Dr. Nyboer Jr. said. “You’ve put a lot of effort into it, and you should go for it.” He knew what it was all about. As a marathon runner, he understood the commitment it took to reach this point as well as anyone could.

  Suddenly Dr. William Keatinge sat straight up in his chair and said, “Look, Lynne, I think we’re all getting a bit carried away here. I’ve been trying not to make any comment, but I really believe I ought to let you know that I don’t think you should swim into Soviet territory without clearance. It would discredit what you’re doing, what we’re doing. And it could provoke a serious incident.”

  This was my concern too. The last thing I wanted to do was to create a problem between the two countries.

  Dr. Keatinge was politically astute; his father had been a member of Parliament, and Dr. Keatinge had maintained strong ties to the British government. He was right. If we went forward without clearance, the fallout could be really bad.

  Dr. Nyboer Jr. was deep in thought, chewing on a piece of pepperoni pizza. “As much as I hate to admit it, I think Bill’s right. We’d look like that crazy guy who tried to walk across last winter. He was put in a Siberian prison for three or four days. Then the Soviets figured out he was mentally unstable and returned him to the U.S.”

  “I don’t want to be connected with anything like that,” Keatinge said emphatically.

  “It would be a great story, though,” Jack Kelley said to me.

  I sat there listening to both sides of the argument, and I was very torn. Part of me wanted to go out there no matter what happened. This was everything I had worked for. Anything short of it would be very disappointing. The other part said I should just swim halfway. I could then at least make the point that we had tried.

  The debate continued for more than an hour, and I kept hoping that the discussion would help me decide what to do. But then it occurred to me that the debate was starting to split the team. The doctors had decided that they would only go halfway, and the journalists indicated they would go all the way. This left me with more questions. If the doctors only went halfway, where was my safety net? Would it be too risky to go on without them?

  Jim McHugh pressed the question: “So what do you think you’re going to do?”

  Finally I arrived at the solution. “I will swim as far as they’ll let me,” I said.

  “Does that mean that you’ll cross the border without permission?” Kelley asked.

  “I’ll decide that when I have to,” I said, and thought, I guess I’m only going halfway. Well, at least that’s something. Not at all what I wanted, but at least it will give us a start.

  The next morning, on Tuesday, August 4, we packed to leave for Wales but no flights were departing. The winds were so strong that all flights had been canceled. But we got good news from Eric Pentilla: the weather between Wales and Little Diomede had been terrible too, and he had been grounded. If we reached Wales the next day, we could fly out with the mail.

  All day long we waited, as calls came in from all over the world. Interviews, training—it was crazy and intense, and I felt very fortunate that I could escape to Dennis Campion’s home and have some coffee with him and talk about his world travels.

  On Wednesday morning, August 5, the airport was fogged in. We waited all morning, and at 1:00 p.m. we decided to leave the airport for some lunch. In the middle of the meal, David Karp came running into the restaurant at full speed and said, “Grab your bags—the flight’s leaving in an hour. You’ll arrive in Wales just in time to connect with Eric. He’ll fly you to Little Diomede.” David was as excited as we were.

  As soon as we took off, I knew that the flight to Wales was going to be rougher than the first. Jim McHugh, who hated to fly, made me laugh very hard. “The editors tell me to ride the wild dragon, fight the hungry tiger, capture the running elephant, and I do all that, but they know I hate to fly in little tiny airplanes. Oh, my mother is lighting candles and praying for me. Oh, this is terrible,” he said, and held his head with one hand.

  I took his other hand. “Don’t worry, it won’t take us long to get there,” I said.

  “How long does it take?”

  “Maybe an hour, and we’ve already been in the air at least fifteen minutes.”

  He groaned loudly. I talked to him to distract him, so he wouldn’t be afraid, and so I wouldn’t be either.

  Finally we arrived in Wales, just as the fog closed in. Chris Shaeffer, whom I had met very briefly on my first trip to Wales, met us at the airport. Her husband had been posted there by the navy to monitor all shipping and aircraft activity in the Bering Strait. She was smiling when she saw us, assuming that we had been given the go-ahead by the Soviets to make the swim. When I told her that we still hadn’t heard anything, she pulled me aside and said, “I don’t know if you’ve heard this, and I’m not sure if I should be telling you, but for the last two days, there’s been significant military traffic in the area.”

  In the middle of our conversation, the clerk from the community center ran over and said, “You’ve got an urgent call from Senator Murkowski’s office. You can take it in the community center.”

  We ran across the village and up three flights of stairs. Breathlessly I picked up the phone. Bruce Evans was on the line. He said he had finally gotten a response from the U.S. Coast Guard, and they would not support the project. They said that if the swim was too dangerous, they wouldn’t allow me to do it. And if the swim wasn’t dangerous, we didn’t need them.

  Very disappointed, I hung up the phone, only to get a call from David Karp. He had been talking with Pat Omiak, the mayor of Little Diomede, for us. Omiak still had not wavered in his boat-rental fee.

  Worse than that, Omiak had been watching Big Diomede for the last two days through the telescope in the community center. The Soviets had moved two ships the size of football fields just a mile south of Big Diomede.

  All day and evening long, the Soviets had been deploying ships to the island. They had been digging in, posting guards around the island, and off-loading men, guns, and equipment. Omiak said he hadn’t seen as much activity on Big Diomede since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

  Omiak didn’t trust the Soviets at all. He had had relatives who once lived on Big Diomede; people from both islands used to go back and forth, visiting. But in 1976, Omiak’s relatives had been removed, forced to relocate on the Siberian mainland, so that Big Diomede could be transformed into a tightly secure military installation.

  More recently, the Soviets had arrested three villagers from Little Diomede who had been out walrus hunting and inadvertently strayed into Soviet waters in the fog. They had been detained for fifty-two days in a Siberian prison.

  With all the troop movement in the area, it appeared to Omiak and the elders on Little Diomede that the Soviets were about to blockade the Bering Strait. Omiak radioed the Alaskan National Guard and alerted the U.S. Air Force. The air force immediately sent pilots up to check out the situation.

  When the Soviets saw the U.S. jets on their radar screens, they scrambled their own planes, and sent out fliers to see what the Americans were up to.

  Bruce Evans called me from Senator Murkowski’s office and confirmed all of this. Murkowski’s office had been in touch with the air force and with the Soviet ambassador, and the ambassador promised to find out what was going on.

  In the morning, I looked at my watch. One day away from my proposed swim date, and I couldn’t fathom why we hadn’t heard from the Soviets. I was just about to enjoy a bite of a bagel when Claire Richardson, the reporter from KNOM, ran into the community center, grabbed me by the arm, and said, “
Lynne, come quickly, David Karp’s on the phone.

  “David has heard from the Soviets. Come on, hurry, run! He’s on the phone at a friend’s house. Hurry, he might get disconnected. He’s frantic. He’s been trying to reach you all night long, but he couldn’t get through, so he called my friend.”

  We ran through the eerily quiet village and barged into the home. No one was there, so I grabbed the phone that was lying off the hook on a small end table and said hello.

  It was David Karp. He started crying. He tried to talk, but he couldn’t get the words out. He began to cough and choke, he was crying so hard.

  Oh no! Oh no, no, no! my mind screamed, The Soviets have said no. After all this, they have said no.

  Bracing myself against a counter, I waited for the weight of his words. My heart was about to burst into a million pieces. An eternity passed in those moments as I waited for David to stop sobbing. He had worked so hard on this project. He had coordinated the press, helped with the sponsors, given us his office—he had put so much into it.

  Finally I couldn’t stand it any longer. “David, what happened?” I said in a soft, soothing voice, ready to burst into tears myself.

  He took a deep breath, and his voice quavered. “Gene Fisher just got a call from Bob Walsh in Moscow.” There was a catch in his voice; he paused and cleared his throat.

  I thought I was going to lose it.

  “The Soviets said yes. They said yes. Yes! You can do it!” He was crying again.

  “Are you sure? Really sure?” I was completely stunned. With the news about the troop buildup on the border the day before, everything had become so much more uncertain.

  “Yes. Yes. They said yes.” David was laughing now.

  They said yes, I thought. Oh my God, now I’ve got to go the whole way. Oh my God.

  Claire threw her arms around me, and we nearly landed on the floor.

  “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you,” Karp added. “I was able to get Pat Omiak to agree to rent you the two boats for five hundred dollars. I told him it would really look bad if the Soviets came through and he didn’t. You’d better get back to the community center—Gene Fisher’s going to call you there.”

  Claire and I ran back to the community center so fast that I can’t remember how we got there. We were gasping for air when we reached the third floor. When the crew saw us, they encircled us.

  It was as if a lightning bolt struck everyone in the room at the same moment. The crew threw their arms into the air and exploded into jubilant cheers. It was a wonderfully strange feeling; all the pressure had suddenly been released, but there was no letdown. It was as if the pressure had been transformed into energy, and all of us were charged by it.

  The doctors eagerly checked and packed their equipment. The journalists dictated stories, and the photographers snapped what seemed like hundreds of pictures. When Gene Fisher called, everyone clustered around the phone to listen in. Fisher’s normal monotone voice was filled with excitement. He said, “Let me read the telex from the Soviet Sports Committee: ‘Please inform where Miss Cox is at present time and what day until August 12 she intends to carry out the swim. We need exact Greenwich and Moscow time. We are ready to render assistance. Your group will be met at the international date line.’ The telex is signed by Alexander Kozlovsky, director of the Soviet Sports Committee.”

  We’d planned to make the swim at eight o’clock tomorrow morning—or any of the following mornings, depending upon the weather. “We will signal the start of the crossing by releasing red, white, and blue balloons,” I said to Fisher. “If there is a problem, is there someone we can contact on Big Diomede?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s a telephone on Big Diomede.”

  “That could be a problem. That means we have to contact Moscow, and that’s fourteen time zones from us, right? If we reach Moscow, how can we relay information to Big Diomede or how can they reach us?”

  “Here is Kozlovsky’s number in Moscow. If there is a problem and I’m not reachable, contact him,” Fisher instructed.

  “Gene, do you know why it took them so long to respond to our telex?”

  “Kozlovsky said there was a breakdown in communication, and their security forces rejected our request.”

  “How did he get them to change their minds?” I asked.

  “Bob Walsh told Kozlovsky that you intended to swim with or without their approval. He said you would swim as far as they would permit. And it would be very embarrassing for Gorbachev if he didn’t allow the crossing, because opening the border symbolized glasnost. When Gorbachev saw the ABC tape he had Gramov, the head of the sports committee, put Kozlovsky in charge of the project. Kozlovsky said the visa requirements have been waived for the Inuit crew in your support boats. And he wants to know if there is anything further you will need to support the swim.”

  “Are those ships supposed to be our escorts? They may be a bit big for us,” I said.

  “They’re just a staging area. They have smaller boats, and they’ll meet you on the border with them. Anything else you need?”

  “Yes, a sleeping bag for rewarming and a babushka,” I said.

  “A babushka?” Gene asked.

  “It’s a brightly colored Russian shawl. In many ways it symbolizes the warmth and brightness of the Russians,” I said, still not knowing what the word meant in Russian.

  What we didn’t know at the time was that Kozlovsky and Walsh had been certain that this project would glorify glasnost and Soviet relations with the United States. Kozlovsky had worked night and day, going through party channels; but somewhere along the line, key people in Gorbachev’s cabinet who should have known about the swim hadn’t heard anything about it.

  That left an opening for the naysayers, and they had the power to move in and set up roadblocks. But Kozlovsky was used to navigating around them. At one time, he had been a world champion cyclist in the Soviet Union. He was still a national hero, and he had friends everywhere. Most people knew him simply as “Mischa,” like the popular bear mascot of the Moscow Olympics. Kozlovsky promised Walsh he would do his best to see that the project would happen, though it was very late.

  Kozlovsky had less than two weeks to pull it all together, and in a country where the normal first, second, and third responses to anything were nyet, two weeks was very little time. He called his friends in the highest echelons of the Soviet government, in the military, and at the KGB. He knew how to package the proposal. He copied the American newspaper clippings and had them translated, along with the letter of support from Senator Murkowski, and he called his friend at the Foreign Ministry. He strongly suggested that Edvard Shevardnadze, the foreign minister, contact Ambassador Dobrynin in Washington. Kozlovsky knew that Ambassador Dobrynin’s endorsement would push the project along. He also gave the story to the Soviet Sports Committee’s public relations department, and they passed it on to the Soviet press. Then Kozvlosky had one copy of the ABC television video hand-delivered to the foreign minister, and another handed directly to Gorbachev’s assistant.

  On Thursday, July 30, with less than a week to go before the proposed swim, a new answer came back from the Soviet government. Kozlovsky immediately wired it to Walsh’s office in Seattle. The telex read: “Your proposal is being reconsidered, and we will advise you of our decision later.”

  Later? Kozlovsky fumed. How much later?

  At 2:00 a.m. on August 1, a directive came from the central government for Kozlovsky to drop everything. He was put in command of the Bering Strait project. His office became the base of all operations, and he was given carte blanche. Everything was put at his disposal—ships, planes, helicopters, personnel, press, and funds, nearly a million dollars’ worth.

  Nothing like this had ever happened to him before, and he was having the time of his life. It was like a chess game, and chess was Kozlovsky’s passion. He set up a series of meetings with top officials from the government, commanders in the military and the security forces, and
immediately began implementing the plan.

  On Tuesday, August 4, one by one the welcoming party began arriving on the Siberian mainland. Most of the group had never met, but they had plenty of time to introduce themselves. There was a world-champion boxer, the governor of Siberia, journalists from across the country, a military commander, the head of the KGB for the Siberian region, and one of Gorbachev’s assistants. More than fifty people had been sent to Siberia as part of the welcoming committee.

  The fog that had prevented us from flying to Wales also grounded the welcoming committee on the Siberian mainland. The military commander called Kozlovsky and informed him of the Soviet team’s delay.

  Meanwhile, the military commander on Big Diomede built special ramps so the American team could land their umiaks safely without being worried that the walrus skins would be punctured by the rocky shore. Kozlovsky wondered if the U.S. Coast Guard would be escorting us. He was eager to see the new coast guard boat.

  On Wednesday, August 5, the fog cleared and the Soviet team was mobilized. They flew to Big Diomede, set up tents, and moved in equipment and supplies. When everything was in place, they took turns staring through binoculars at the Eskimo village on Little Diomede. For hours they searched the shoreline, straining to see where the American team was.

  Then a military lookout shouted from the beach. He had spotted something in the water heading toward Big Diomede. Sure that it had to be the American swimmer, they scurried from their mountainside tents, down a rocky and slippery cliff face to the beach. When the head coach for the Soviet national swim team took his turn looking through the binoculars, he started laughing out loud. It wasn’t a human swimmer moving toward shore; it was a seal.

  The following morning, on Thursday, August 6, the Soviet welcome party crawled from their tents wondering again where the American team was.

  We stood on the other side of the strait in the early evening—six o’clock. The sea was peaceful, and we could see the very top of Big Diomede’s volcanic cone. It looked so close, I just wanted to put on my bathing suit and swim across, but we had told the Soviets we would leave here at 8:00 a.m.