Swimming to Antarctica (16 page)

She collected the leads, held them while I pulled up my suit, and then draped them over my right shoulder. She gathered the thermocouple wires and let them rest in a pile on the floor. Just before we left the cubicle she handed me a tube of K-Y Jelly and a lead that was at least twenty feet long. She explained that the lead was called a rectal probe; it was a thermometer that would measure my core temperature during the experiment. I needed to insert it so they could get the necessary readings. She left me standing there with the jelly in one hand and the twenty-foot-long probe in the other. I was completely baffled. The whole thing? I wondered. Too embarrassed to ask, I stood there wondering what I should do. Thankfully, Anne Loucks came by to check on me and explained that all I needed to insert was four inches; then the lead would be taped to my upper thigh so it wouldn’t slide out during the test.

Once we secured the probe, Anne untangled the leads and held on to the cluster of EKG leads with one hand and the thermocouples with the other. Following her into the lab, filing past the researchers and lab assistants, I felt very self-conscious, especially with a twenty-foot-long tail wagging behind me.

When we entered the cold-tank area, it looked like NASA’s mission control. Dr. Drinkwater, Dr. McCafferty, Dr. Horvath, and two other physiologists, as well as Dr. Reyburn, an internist, and Dr. Borjia, a cardiologist, were standing around the tank, all wearing white lab coats, checking their equipment, and calibrating it to ensure that the measurements would be accurate. Some were making notes on their clipboards, others rehearsing the test.

Lab assistants, computer experts, and the man in charge of the lab’s technical equipment were wheeling equipment in on dollies.
Printers were buzzing, the tank was gurgling, and Dr. Reyburn and Dr. Borjia were on the phone with their colleagues at Cottage Hospital, alerting them to the experiment and asking them to be prepared if there was an emergency. This, they assured me, was just to make sure that nothing got out of hand.

A lab assistant wheeled a dolly to the doorway and left it outside the room.

“Anne, are those defibrillating paddles?” I asked.

She nodded. “We’re placing them within reach of the tank in case your heart stops during the experiment. We won’t need them unless something really goes wrong,” she reassured me.

“Why aren’t they placed closer to the tank?” I asked, feeling a little apprehensive.

“We don’t want them too close to the tank. The defibrillator could accidentally discharge while you’re in the water and electrocute you. If we need to use them, we have to make sure you’re clear of the tank.”

“If that happens, I’m going to be deadweight,” I said, starting to worry.

Dr. McCafferty, who overheard our conversation, ripped his lab coat open like Superman and said, “That’s why I’m wearing a wet suit, so I can jump into the water and pull you out if I need to.” Dr. McCafferty was a tall, strawberry-blond, blue-eyed, fit surfer boy and a vegetarian. In a short time, he had become one of my best friends and supporters. He had also become a mentor to me, teaching me about human physiology, as well as life philosophy. He looked at what we were doing as a great adventure, an exploration into the limits of human endurance, and he was just really a great guy.

Dr. McCafferty explained that he would be getting into the tank with me. He would tie a rope around my waist like a surfboard leash in case they needed to drag me out of the water. They would also have me wear an army belt that would have a long piece of surgical cord attached to the belt and to the tank wall, so that I could swim tethered.

The water in the tank was radiating so much cold that some of the technicians had to leave to get coats and sweaters. Dr. Drinkwater
handed me a nose plug and asked me to put it on so that I could get used to breathing through my mouth. As I started climbing down a ladder into the tank, Dr. McCafferty handed me a mouthpiece that resembled a diver’s regulator. He instructed me to clamp down on the mouthpiece with my teeth. The mouthpiece was connected to two long plastic tubes, devices that would allow them to capture gases during the experiment to measure my oxygen intake, which would enable them to see how hard my body was working.

Dr. McCafferty gathered some of the leads while Anne took the remaining ones, and they plugged them into their respective monitoring devices.

Dr. McCafferty asked me how long I intended to swim. I told him an hour, and he raised an eyebrow. He said that since this was the first time anyone he knew of would be swimming in forty-two-degree water, perhaps it would be wise to reconsider. He said that in a wet suit, before the experiment, when he was setting up the devices in the tank, he had only been able to stay in the water for five minutes. I told him I understood, but I really wanted to see how far I could go in the controlled setting.

Dr. Drinkwater completely understood, although she cautioned me. She said if I started feeling very cold in the water, I should get out. I promised her that I would.

The noise in the room had dulled to a low-pitched buzz. The doctors and lab techs went to their stations. My heart began beating faster.

The tank was about half the size of a backyard swimming pool and that, coupled with the surgical-tubing leash, wouldn’t allow for much movement. I looked around the room. Dr. Horvath was just entering the lab; he asked some questions, checked the equipment, and made sure I was okay. He was about to turn and leave but I stopped him. I was afraid that at the end of the experiment I would be so cold that I wouldn’t be able to talk, so I said, “Dr. Horvath, I just want to thank you for letting me do this, and I want everyone here to know how much I appreciate their help.”

It took him by surprise, but he smiled, and so did the entire research team.

“We’re ready when you are,” Dr. Drinkwater said, smiling confidently at me.

Nodding and focusing inward, I climbed down the steps into the tank. In seconds my feet went numb, then my calves, and my entire body tightened. It was so cold it hurt. Pushing myself, I took another step down. Now I was immersed to my waist, and my breathing was rapid, my eyes wide open. Remembering to pull my goggles down over my eyes, I stopped and looked at the water. Forty-two degrees was a lot colder than anything I’d ever swum in before; it took my breath away. My legs were aching. Stepping down onto the next rung, I was immersed to my shoulders and focusing hard to bring my breathing back to normal. “Lynne, you doing okay?” Dr. McCafferty asked.

I knew that once I put my face in the water, my heart would slow down and in a minute or two I would gain control over my breathing and get back into a natural rhythm.

Dr. McCafferty followed me down the stairs to make sure all the lines remained untangled. He winced when the water reached his waist, and I wanted to laugh. He smiled at me and reminded me, “Take your time. Remember that you’re accustomed to walking into the water slowly. Let your body gradually adjust to the temperature change.”

Dipping my chin in the water, I let it go numb, then immersed my lips. I told myself to put my nose in very slowly. There is a nerve in the nose called the vagus nerve. It’s what triggers a response called the diver’s reflex. When someone falls suddenly into extremely cold water, this nerve is stimulated and can cause the heart to suddenly stop beating. So I dipped in the tip of my nose, then ever so slowly placed my face in the water. It was like pressing my face against a block of ice.

My goggles were fogging up. Dr. McCafferty took them off and licked them for me—the protein in saliva inhibits fogging—and then put them back over my eyes. “You okay?” he asked again.

I nodded and he climbed out of the tank; then I started swimming. Tethered on every side by leads, probes, a mouthpiece, and the army belt, I felt as if I were trapped inside a spider’s web. Batting the
leads away with my hands, I tried to make room for my arms to move, but I couldn’t turn them over as quickly as normal.

“Five minutes,” Dr. McCafferty shouted, looking at his stopwatch.

It had seemed like fifteen; it had seemed like forever. And I was feeling a little claustrophobic.

The water was so cold that my arms were completely numb. When I pulled, I couldn’t feel anything. I was so frustrated. I knew then that there was no way I could swim for an hour. But I told myself to break it down into smaller pieces, to think not in terms of an hour, but of five-minute blocks. In theory, that should have worked, but I didn’t know if I could last for even another five minutes. I was discouraged. How could I even consider swimming the Strait of Magellan if I couldn’t last more than five minutes in forty-two-degree water?
Focus. Keep going. Count your strokes to one thousand. Okay, again.

Lifting my head, I heard Dr. McCafferty say, “You’ve been in for twenty minutes.”

That was all I could stand. Putting my hand up, I knew I couldn’t go any further. I was just too cold. Dr. McCafferty and Dr. Drink-water grabbed me under the arms when I reached the top of the stairs; Anne held on to all the leads. Someone threw a towel over my shoulders, and Dr. Drinkwater asked me if I could stay in the room for a bit while they finished gathering all the gases and data. Unable to talk with the mouthpiece still in, I nodded. I was so disappointed. My time in the water had been brief.

Dr. McCafferty was right beside me. “You did a great job. Really amazing,” he said.

I was shaking very hard as Anne walked with me to the shower. She turned on only the cold water first because it felt warm to me, and because there was no feeling in my hands. Gradually, as I warmed up, she added more warm water. Maybe twenty minutes later, she helped me take off all the gear.

Later that day, Dr. McCafferty met me outside the lab, at an overlook above Goleta Bay near Santa Cruz Dorm. He was tremendously
excited about the preliminary data the research team had gathered. From it, he saw that my body performed differently than those of all the other research subjects he had worked with in the past. My core temperature had increased by a degree at first; ten minutes or so into the experiment, it had dropped only a couple degrees, then stabilized. All the other subjects he had worked with were in water temperatures in the sixties, but they had continuously lost body heat. Dr. McCafferty was fascinated that, in forty-two-degree water without any training, I had been able to stabilize my core temperature.

I didn’t understand why he was so excited, so he explained that by training in cold temperatures, there was a good chance that I could adjust enough to stay in the water for a longer time period and maintain a normal body temperature.

This meant that there was a good chance that I could swim across the Strait of Magellan, and he, Dr. Drinkwater, and Anne Loucks offered to accompany me off and on during the training program and to continue gathering data. For two months, I trained in fifty-four-degree water. During one workout in fifty-degree water, Dr. Drinkwater took my core temperature. It was 101°. None of us knew what would happen to me in the Strait of Magellan if the water temperature was in the forties, but I decided I had to try.

When John Sonnichsen and I arrived in Punta Arenas, Chile, we were welcomed into local people’s homes and shops. And whenever John and I walked on the street, people came over to us and wished us
mucha suerte
—much luck. Having their support made me feel very welcome and happy, and at the same time, I felt the burden of expectation. No one had swum across the Strait of Magellan, and it seemed that everyone in the entire city of Punta Arenas knew that this was my goal and wanted to show their overwhelming enthusiasm and support.

The pressure of expectation increased considerably during my first day training in the strait. The water temperature that day was forty-four degrees. It was so cold that I was able to get into the Atlantic Ocean only as far as my knees. For twenty minutes I stood there thinking,
How in the world am I ever going to make this swim?
Granted, in a straight line, the distance across the strait is only a mile and a half, from the tip of Chile to the island of Tierra del Fuego. But before we even started on this adventure, John and I knew there was no way I would ever swim in a straight line. The currents and tides could be as strong as ten knots, faster than a rain-fed river after a torrential downpour. This swim, we predicted, would take me at least an hour.

John and I had just traveled to the other half of the Americas; we were tired and jet-lagged, and I told myself to take that into consideration, to give myself a break. Still, that initial dip was very daunting; I just didn’t know how far I could push myself

The next day, pushing negative thoughts and feelings aside, I slid my feet in and walked into the icy water again, this time to my shoulders, and made myself stand there for twenty minutes.

On one level, my progress was incredibly slow; yet at the same time, I realized that I was doing something that had never been done before. Everything I attempted had to be performed cautiously, in small steps. I had to allow time for my body to gradually adapt.

Little by little, over the course of the first week, I managed to extend my training time in the water so that I could swim for up to an hour. My big reward came after every workout. There was a family named Fernandez who lived in a large home on the beach near my training area. Every day they would come outside and walk the beach with John, and they invited us into their home afterward to get warm and have hot chocolate with them. They let me thaw out in their hot tub and sit with them beside a fire while the two older boys played their guitars and sang Chilean folk songs for us.

One day the two sons donned their wet suits and swam out into the strait with me so they could show me shipwrecks along the shore. In a mile’s area there were perhaps fifty shipwrecks, some fairly recent, others hundreds of years old. It was like swimming over liquid history, fascinating and yet eerie; we were passing over a graveyard of ships that had traveled from the far reaches of the world, from Italy, Portugal, Britain, and Spain.

After two weeks of training I was able to stay in forty-four-degree water for up to two hours. One of my most difficult training sessions was on Christmas Day. It was the first time I had ever been away from my family at Christmas, and although I enjoyed being with families in Chile, I realized how very far I was from home.

During that workout on Christmas Day the sky suddenly went black, as it had that day in New Hampshire when I was nine years old and swimming in the pool alone. This time, though, the Fernandez
brothers and a small group of locals and tourists from England walked alongside me during the wild and pounding hailstorm. Once the storm subsided, they were joyful at having done something so strange and different, something all of us would remember for our entire lives.

Unfortunately, the stormy weather continued through the next day. But on December 27, the Chilean navy, which had volunteered to provide assistance for the swim, informed us that it was time to travel by bus to what is known as the First Narrows. This is the passage, at one point only a mile and a half wide, that Magellan had discovered when sailing from the Atlantic Ocean through to the Pacific Ocean.

When we reached the First Narrows, we waited for the Chilean navy ship the
Elicura
to land and drop its ramp onshore so we could walk aboard. As we watched Captain Furniss attempt to land, we held our breath. The tide was racing into the strait from the Atlantic at seven knots, moving like a flooding river. Two hundred meters offshore, the current caught the
Elicura
and spun it around as if it were a toy boat. Alarms on board sounded, as men scrambled around deck. The ship was about to run aground.

Quickly, Captain Furniss ordered his wheelman to steer offshore, but the ship wasn’t responding. The captain ordered more power to the engines, and a deep rumble vibrated the air and beach. The ship still didn’t move.

John pointed. “Look at the stern. See all the brown water? The propeller’s in too close, and they’re churning up sand. He’s in trouble.”

Hoping that they could ride the current to a point where it diminished and then cut across it, the captain ordered his wheelman to parallel the shore. There was only a small margin for error, and a delay between when the captain gave the order and how quickly the ship responded. Fearing he would run aground in those moments, we held our breath. The ship seemed to teeter in the current between the sea and the shore. Fortunately, the captain made the right call. As he anticipated, the current slackened, and he quickly ordered his wheelman to turn offshore.

Watching this was terribly sobering.
If a ship can’t land in that current, what’s it going to be like trying to swim across it?
I wondered with a sense of dread. After that attempted landing, John and I thought the swim would have to be postponed for the day. But the captain wasn’t ready to give up. He made a second attempt to pick us up, this time allowing for more time to turn the stern in to shore so they could drop the ramp. But once again the current whipped the ship around and tossed it precariously within a couple hundred meters of shore. This time Captain Furniss reacted sooner, increasing the ship’s speed and pulling offshore. Then he immediately ordered the crew to lower a Zodiac inflatable rubber boat into the water. Two of his men motored in to shore to pick up John and me, as well as a number of reporters from all over Chile and the international press, who had been assigned to cover what they considered would be a historic swim.

Maneuvering the rubber inflatable was much easier than trying to land the
Elicura,
and within minutes two frogmen had picked us up and ferried us out to the ship. The ship towered at least thirty feet above us, and as we came alongside under full power, the rubber inflatable began bouncing and rebounding wildly off the port side of the ship. Waves were washing over the pontoons into the rubber inflatable, and the wind was blowing sheets of water onto us.

The only way to get on board was to climb onto a slippery pontoon, balance on it until the moment just before the boat and ship collided, then leap up to grab a ladder. It was risky. Missing the handhold would result in being squashed between the two boats or being sucked into the ship’s engines.

John went ahead of me. The boats smashed together while his legs were sandwiched in between and he yelled in pain, nearly losing his grip on the ladder. Somehow he managed to hold on and pull himself up. Once on board, he leaned over and called me to follow.

It was scary standing on the pontoon with my arms extended for balance. Just a moment before I leaped, a wave caught the inflatable and it dropped out from under me. Leaning back, I tumbled into the boat, got up quickly while I had any nerve left, and leaped toward the ladder. It was narrow, slippery, and steep, and it bounced wildly in
the waves. The climb was straight up. As the
Elicura
rocked and swayed, I was afraid to let go of each ladder rung so I could reach for the next. My hand missed once, and I froze there in midair, not wanting to go any farther, but knowing I had to. And the frogmen were waiting for me so they could climb on board.

“Don’t look down,” John warned.

Of course I did, and the sight of the boats colliding below me scared me even more. This was not what I expected at all. It wasn’t supposed to be this difficult to get to a swim. If it was as hairy as this, what was the swim going to be like?
These are not helpful thoughts,
I told myself.
Focus on what you need to do now. Look at the rung, extend your arm, hold on to it, step onto the next rung, and don’t let your foot slip.

At the top, John and Captain Furniss grabbed me under each arm and hoisted me on board. My heart was racing, and I was drenched.

We followed Captain Furniss to the ship’s bridge. The slight but strong-looking man welcomed us on board and had us stand by the heater, near a table covered by a nautical chart of the Strait of Magellan.

“We’ll take a look at that in a moment,” he said. “First, I have to check on my men and make sure they’ve managed to pull the rubber inflatable on board. Here, let me introduce you to Dr. Fernandez, the ship’s doctor. He’s here to ensure your safety during the swim, Lynne, and this is Commander Charlie—” I never did catch the commander’s last name.

Dr. Fernandez greeted me with the customary kiss on each cheek, making my face glow. Maybe it was the intensity of the swim, or being so far from home, or maybe it was simply because of Dr. Fernandez. From the moment I met him, I really liked him. Dr. Fernandez was good-hearted and caring, and he radiated enthusiasm. He was also very attractive—tall and trim, with sandy blond hair and eyes as blue as the sea. I quickly gravitated toward him.

When Captain Furniss returned, we gathered around the chart. He had been briefed on what we wanted to achieve. And he had been given orders to work with us, so from the onset we began to be a
team, with John conveying our thoughts about how we wanted to coordinate the swim. I freely asked questions of the captain, Dr. Fernandez, and the commander. It was so exciting being on the ship’s bridge, looking out across the whitecapped strait, feeling the ship moving beneath my feet, and knowing that we were working with one of the top navies in the world.

During the past few weeks John and I had been gathering information on the strait. We’d spoken with the Chilean coast guard, which at first had been supportive of the swim and then had decided it was too dangerous. The coast guard withdrew their support, said they would not supply any boat for the swim, and then pressured the Chilean navy to do the same.

John and I were in a meeting with the admiral of the coast guard and the admiral of the Chilean navy when this happened. There was a strongly worded discussion between the two men. Neither John nor I understood enough Spanish to comprehend what they were saying, but from their body language we could tell that they were not happy with each other.

Ultimately, through an interpreter—although he spoke some English—the admiral of the Chilean navy explained the situation. He said that the coast guard could do as they wished and that he understood the reasons for their protest, but he had given his word that he would support us for the swim. He had assured the Chilean ambassador and consul general in San Francisco that they would help us, and he would not back down on his word. Besides that, he firmly believed that we could achieve our goal with their support.

I thanked the naval admiral for his backing and asked if I could borrow the interpreter to speak with the admiral of the coast guard. It was obvious that they were a little surprised that I’d taken the initiative. I don’t think they were accustomed to listening to nineteen-year-old girls, but they humored me. I didn’t want the swim to create any animosity between the Chilean navy and the Chilean coast guard, so I told the admiral of the coast guard that I greatly appreciated his concern for my safety, and that it was of concern to me too. That was exactly why I had contacted him, to request his help to ensure my
safety throughout the swim. He knew more about the tides and currents in the strait than I ever would; he dealt with them every day. His men boarded and piloted all the ships that traveled through the strait as a safety precaution. He also knew the mistakes people made in these waters, all the things to avoid. So we needed his help, and his knowledge. I told him I had no intention of attempting the swim if it became too dangerous.

In the end, the admiral of the coast guard said that he was still hesitant about the swim, but he would provide whatever information and assistance he could. I asked if he could help us get in touch with a man who operated a small ferryboat in the First Narrows, who would have daily and in-depth knowledge of the tides and currents in the area. When we left the meeting that day, the admirals shook hands, and they were smiling.

As the
Elicura
sailed southward across the strait, toward Tierra del Fuego, we worked with Captain Furniss, his commander, Dr. Fernandez, and the crew to try to determine the best starting point, the swim’s course, and the end point. The forecast was mixed. And neither John nor I knew it at the time, but this was Captain Furniss’s first solo command. He was being prudent and cautious. He wanted the swim to be a success.

We had hopes of starting the swim that afternoon, but the wind was howling across the treeless, golden Patagonian flatlands, gaining speed with each passing hour, and increasing up to thirty knots. The Strait of Magellan was a sea of three-foot-high aquamarine waves that exploded into whitecaps and swirled and seethed around the majestic ship, the only boat operating in the strait.

It didn’t seem likely that the wind would subside quickly, but Captain Furniss knew that conditions in the strait changed more rapidly than anywhere in the world. There were time constraints on us; it wasn’t clear how long we could tie up the navy ship, but we knew it wouldn’t be more than a few days. So Captain Furniss wanted to get the swim off as soon as it was safe. He also had other considerations at home. We didn’t know it at the time, but his wife was in the hospital about to give birth. Hoping for a lull in the wind, Captain Furniss
ordered his crew to cruise slowly back and forth along Tierra del Fuego’s shore. It felt as if we were pacing, letting off nervous energy.