Swimming to Antarctica (29 page)

When David Soolook returned, he was carrying seven rifles. The crew had decided to go seal hunting during the swim. Somehow I had to tell them that it wasn’t the right time to hunt seal. I was concerned that they might miss and hit me, or attract sharks, but what worried me more than that was the Soviets’ perception of the rifles. What would they think if they saw the Inuit landing with rifles?

David Soolook and his crew were not prepared to relinquish their weapons; they didn’t trust the Soviets. So I explained that things were changing, that the reason for this swim was to foster trust; we had to put aside the fear and work together.

After a tense and long discussion with David Soolook and Pat Omiak, the villagers agreed to leave their rifles at home. But by now our visibility was less than two hundred yards, and it was drizzling hard. We were just about to push off when David Soolook again jumped out of the umiak and ran back up the beach. Ten minutes later he returned with a rusty old compass. When he tried to start the motor, it wouldn’t start. Finally, after another ten minutes, we were moving.

On the outer edges of Big Diomede, long trailing bands of fog were forming, like warning signs. Fog was gathering into sheets, and trying to see through these bands was like looking through cotton batting. How would we see the Soviets if the fog filled the strait? Where would we meet them? What would happen if we landed in a spot where we weren’t supposed to? What would they think when we
reached the border ahead of schedule? Would they understand? All I knew was that I had to get in and swim soon, because I couldn’t stand one more delay.

By eight-thirty, the entire village had finally assembled by the edge of the Bering Sea. They shouted good wishes to us in our two boats and to the group of villagers, along with Maria Sullivan and Dr. Nyboer Sr., who were climbing into the five additional umiaks.

We motored south in the umiaks, along the craggy shore of Little Diomede toward the southern tip of the island, where we would begin the swim. Ethereal clouds swirled around the island, and the air was filled with the smell of seabirds and salt and charged with expectation. As we reached the southern section of the island, we moved through a heavy blue fog. Our visibility decreased to one hundred yards; we could just see the shore. It was very rocky, and we could not land the boats. We were afraid that the rocks would puncture the walrus skins.

At that same time, I was thinking of my own skin.
Take your sweats off. Let your skin cool down to the air temperature. That way it won’t be such a shock when you hit the water.
I cringed. I knew it was going to be cold, really cold, but I had asked that no one tell me the water temperature until I finished. I didn’t want to psych myself out before I got into the water. I told myself,
Be calm; focus on what you are going to do. Don’t get distracted, don’t get overwhelmed, take it all as it comes. You are ready for this; you’ve prepared for years. This is it, your time to shine. Go forth with all your powers. Go forth with everything in you. Make it work.

Oh, shoot. Okay, wait a minute; wait until everyone is in position. When it’s time to go, you just want to go; you don’t want to
stop for anything. The water’s going to be too cold. You can’t stop for anything. You will lose heat too fast if you do. Don’t stop for a second. If the boats stray off course, just head straight. Keep going. Move forward. Sprint. Sprint the whole way across. Stop for nothing. This is it. It is time.

Take a deep breath. Okay, take another one. Steady your heart. You’re shaking. You’re scared, cold, excited. You’ll be fine. You’ll do fine. Look at the crew. They are smiling. They are excited. They are so ready too. Okay, climb onto the Zodiac’s pontoon. Look, Dr. Nyboer Jr. is offering a hand. Take it. Don’t let him see you shaking or he’ll be worried. Okay, balance yourself. Let your feet feel the water. Oh, it is cold. Wow. It’s colder than I expected. Okay, take another breath. You’re ready for this now. You’re smiling. Good. Okay, you’re going to have to slide in, off the pontoon. Take a deep breath first, let your body drop underwater, turn, swim toward shore as fast as you can, climb out of the water and clear it, and then shout to the crew that you’re starting. The journalists will keep track of your time.

The boats have moved into position. Dr. Keatinge’s telling you he’s ready. The thermopill is working.

Everything is set. Okay, slide feet-first into the water. You don’t want to have a heart attack. Oh my God. It’s like liquid ice—
The frigid water punched the air out of my lungs. I popped up, gasping.
Catch your breath; swim for shore. Put your face in the water. Sprint as fast as you can. My arms are numb. I don’t care. Climb out on the rocks. Oh, shoot, I just slipped, ripped the back of my thigh on some barnacles. It stings. It’s bleeding. So what—it will stop. Get focused. All right. You’ve got to stop smiling. But I’m so happy. After so many years, it’s hard to believe I’m here. You’ll believe it in a minute when you hit that water again. Come on. Let nothing stop you. Okay, they’re ready. Go!

My heart was pounding in my chest. Hitting the water with a splash, I began stroking as fast as my arms would turn over. Nothing had ever felt as good as that moment. Finally I was swimming across the Bering Strait from the United States to the Soviet Union. I swam
with absolute elation. My strokes—what I could feel with numb arms—were strong and powerful, and I moved rapidly across the Bering Sea’s calm surface. The sea’s tranquillity was in such contrast to the way I felt, so full of energy, of excitement, of utter happiness. I had dreamed, and so many others had embraced my dream. We were doing this together. Sure, I was out there in the water, but I had so many people I carried along with me in this dream and who carried me as well. It was absolutely fantastic.

Within moments, the two escort boats were behind me, and in the fog. I had nothing to use in front of or behind me as a reference point for navigation. Little Diomede had already disappeared in a fog bank. The escort boats weren’t following the plan; they were supposed to be right beside me, guiding me. I started to get worried. I didn’t want to get lost. I later found out the water temperature at that point was forty-two degrees.

The boats slid farther behind, and the crew didn’t appear to know where they were heading. In water that cold, every moment we strayed off course reduced our chances of making it across.

Looking back over my right shoulder, I could barely see Dr. Keatinge and Dr. Nyboer Jr. in their black wet suits. They were fidgeting with the equipment, trying to get it to work properly. I became more agitated. Precious moments were ticking by, moments we would never get back.

Lifting my head, I drew in a deep breath, continued spinning my arms, and yelled, “Bill, are we going straight or what?”

Dr. Keatinge was involved with the equipment, so I shouted again.

“Go straight ahead,” he shouted, then realized that I was being consumed by the fog. He shouted to Pat Omiak and David Soolook to move their boats to either side of me.

I was still swimming as fast as my arms would turn over. It was like being on the very edge of life. Every moment I had to be acutely aware of everything, to stay attuned to my body, to make sure I wasn’t going into hypothermia.

Looking down through the clear, icy, gray-blue water, I examined
my hands. My fingers were together, my hands like paddles; that was good. It meant that I was maintaining fine motor control, and that my brain was warm. If my fingers started spreading apart, that would mean I was losing fine motor control and my brain was cooling down. This was dangerous. It was a sign that I was going into hypothermia, and also possibly losing my sense of judgment. I was okay. But my hands were numb. With each arm stroke, I had to wait to feel the water pushed by my hands against my thighs to know that my hands were pushing water and I was moving forward. I glanced at my shoulders; they were splotchy red and white. The blood from the exterior of my body was pooling in the core to protect my heart and vital organs. I began sprinting, faster and faster, trying to generate more heat than I was losing to the Bering Sea.

Dr. Nyboer and Dr. Keatinge were waving and shouting at me.

“Lynne, swim close to us and roll over. We need to take your temperature,” Dr. Nyboer said, grabbing the receiver attached to the broom handle. Dr. Keatinge moved to the opposite side of the Zodiac to counterbalance Dr. Nyboer. I rolled over onto my back and started backstroking, turning my arms over as fast as I could. When I did the backstroke, I didn’t produce as much heat as when I swam freestyle. So during this experiment, the cold water was rapidly sucking the heat from my body. It was like standing wet and naked in front of an air conditioner on high.

Dr. Nyboer was trying to hold the receiver near my stomach to get a transmission from the thermopill, but the ocean waves were bouncing him slightly up and down and sideways. A freak wave hit the Zodiac and Dr. Nyboer missed the reading, nearly plunging headfirst into the water with me.

I knew these temperature readings were necessary, to make sure that my core temperature was staying at normal levels, but I was getting annoyed. This was slowing me down and reducing my ability to create heat, and I was losing more now than I was making. I didn’t want to wait for him.

“Let’s try again. Roll onto your back,” Dr. Nyboer shouted.

He held the receiver near my stomach while Dr. Keatinge stared at
a digital readout in a black box. This procedure would take only two or three minutes, but that was way too long. It was making me cold.

“She’s cooling down a bit. She’s down to ninety-seven degrees. Lynne, are you doing all right?” Dr. Keatinge asked. His voice sounded edgy.

“Yes, this is great,” I shouted happily, covering my real feelings. I didn’t want Dr. Keatinge or Dr. Nyboer to panic, to think that I was getting too cold. I didn’t want them to pull me out of the water. I had to appear warm to them—as if this swim were easy. But I was a little worried. Before the swim, my temperature had been 100.7. That was pretty normal for me before a big swim, but it had already dropped three degrees, and I’d been in the water for only about half an hour. My cutoff point was ninety-four degrees. That was the beginning of hypothermia.

From the onset, Dr. Keatinge, Dr. Nyboer, and I had decided that I would have a three-hour limit in the water. By that time, the water would have cooled my peripheral areas down, and after the swim was completed, my core temperature would fall further. We didn’t want it to drop too far.

The fog deepened so that our visibility diminished to fifty yards. The crew was covered in a fine mist, the droplets clinging to their hair like dew and saturating their parkas. Huddling forward, they stared into the consuming grayness. We crossed the border, we thought, though it was hard to tell. There was nothing in the middle of the strait to indicate exactly where the border was. Scanning ahead, we strained to see the Soviet boats, but we couldn’t make out anything in the gray void.

The current was pushing us north, and we were cutting across it. Our concern was still that we would be pushed into the Chukchi Sea before we reached shore. Then ghostlike fog blanketed us, constricting the light, and our visibility dropped to ten yards. It felt as if we had become detached from the world, a tiny blip of warmth on an icy, gray sea. We were moving in a void between the two islands. I felt like screaming. I was losing sight of the boats. That fear from the Catalina swim had come back to haunt me, only this time it was worse; it
gripped me so hard that I was shaking in the water. I sprinted closer to the umiaks for human warmth. I needed to stay near them. I couldn’t lose them.

David Soolook checked his compass and noticed that we were thirty degrees off course. He shouted something to Pat Omiak in Inuit, and suddenly both boats made sharp forty-five-degree corrections to the left.

Now the current was broaching the left side of my head.
Do they know what they’re doing?
I wondered.
Don’t they realize that every moment we stray off course, we diminish our chances of making it across?

How could I expect them to know this? They hadn’t expected me to get into the water. They didn’t think anyone could swim in the Bering Strait and survive.

Heavy drizzle began falling as Dr. Keatinge and Dr. Nyboer waved me over for another reading. I rolled over onto my back, impatient and grumpy. These readings were taking too long. Every time I slowed down, I got colder. Tremors were racing up my back.

Dr. Nyboer was doing his best, but he couldn’t get a reading. He waved me away from the boat, then back again for another attempt. This time I ignored him. I had to start swimming faster, had to stay warm. The point wasn’t to be a human subject; it was to get across. This was slowing me down.

A few minutes later, Dr. Nyboer waved me over again. He held the receiver right above my stomach while Dr. Keatinge studied the monitor. The receiver was malfunctioning. Although the doctors were working hard to fix it, cold was moving into my muscles, and they felt like wood. At that moment, I decided I would not stop again for tests. I couldn’t afford it.

Suddenly we made another sharp correction to the left.
Why can’t we stay on course?
I wondered.
Have we missed Big Diomede? Is that why the Soviets haven’t appeared?
We had to be at least halfway by now. We had to have crossed the border.
Where are you? Can you hear us? Please find us.

I didn’t know it then, but Pat Omiak and David Soolook weren’t
sure where we were. They had hunted walrus only along the border, never crossed over it. So they didn’t know what the currents were like on the other side. Pat Omiak asked Dr. Keatinge what heading he should take. Neither Pat Omiak nor Dr. Keatinge knew how far north we had already drifted. Rich Roberts, the journalist from the
Los Angeles Times
who was also a sailor, asked Pat Omiak what heading he was on, and then Rich helped Pat make a critical correction.

The crew searched the fog for the Soviets, knowing that we needed them to guide us to shore.

At first I thought I heard a sound through the water. It sounded like a small boat’s motor, but then it disappeared. I heard it again. It grew louder, and then faded again.
Please find us,
I thought.

The sound of the motor grew louder. I could feel the water trembling around my body. I could hear the engine’s soft putter. The crew heard it too. The Soviet boat was circling somewhere out there. It was them. It had to be them! They were searching for us! The putter grew deeper; then the sound changed. They were moving away.
Oh God, no!
I thought desperately.

The crew was shouting at the top of their lungs, waving their arms in the fog. No one could see them, and their voices were muffled, and no one could hear them, either. Jim McHugh and Jack Kelley began whooping. The entire crew yelled. The motor sound grew louder again.

Turning to breathe, I saw Claire Richardson bouncing up and down in the umiak. Jack Kelley was pointing. “Look, there they are! It’s them. It’s the Soviets!”

It was one of the most beautiful sights of my life. The dark gray Soviet boat motored slowly out of the fog toward us. They were there. Really there. And they were going to help us.

For eleven years I had imagined this moment. I had imagined meeting Soviet sailors in the middle of the Bering Strait. But I never could have imagined the way I would feel. All the work, all the hope, all the faith, all the belief, all those people who’d believed and who hadn’t, and now, the Soviets were right there.

“It’s them! It’s the Soviets!” I heard the crew shouting.

Claire Richardson yelled to me, “What day is it, Lynne?”

“It’s tomorrow. It’s tomorrow!” I shouted.

We had crossed the border and the international date line; we had reached from the present into the future. We had done it. My goggles filled with tears. Finally, we had found each other.