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Cox - Swimming to Antarctica

Here you can read online Cox - Swimming to Antarctica full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2004;2009, publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, genre: Non-fiction. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

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    Swimming to Antarctica
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At age fourteen, she swam twenty-six miles from Catalina Island to the California mainland. At ages fifteen and sixteen, she broke the mens and womens world records for swimming the English Channel--a thirty-three-mile crossing in nine hours, thirty-six minutes. At eighteen, she swam the twenty-mile Cook Strait between North and South Islands of New Zealand, was caught on a massive swell, found herself after five hours farther from the finish than when she started, and still completed the swim. She was the first to swim the Strait of Magellan, the most treacherous three-mile stretch of water in the world. The first to swim the Bering Strait--the channel that forms the boundary line between the United States and Russia--from Alaska to Siberia, thereby opening the U.S.-Soviet border for the first time in forty-eight years, swimming in thirty-eight-degree water in four-foot waves without a shark cage, wet suit, or lanolin grease. The first to swim the Cape of Good Hope (a shark emerged from the kelp, its jaws wide open, and was shot as it headed straight for her). In this extraordinary book, the worlds most extraordinary distance swimmer writes about her emotional and spiritual need to swim and about the almost mystical act of swimming itself. Lynne Cox trained hard from age nine, working with an Olympic coach, swimming five to twelve miles each day in the Pacific. At age eleven, she swam even when hail made the water like cold tapioca pudding and was told she would one day swim the English Channel. Four years later--not yet out of high school--she broke the mens and womens world records for the Channel swim. In 1987, she swam the Bering Strait from America to the Soviet Union--a feat that, according to Gorbachev, helped diminish tensions between Russia and the United States. Lynne Coxs relationship with the water is almost mystical: she describes swimming as flying, and remembers swimming at night through flocks of flying fish the size of mockingbirds, remembers being escorted by a pod of dolphins that came to her off New Zealand. She has a photographic memory of her swims. She tells us how she conceived of, planned, and trained for each, and re-creates for us the experience of swimming (almost) unswimmable bodies of water, including her most recent astonishing one-mile swim to Antarctica in thirty-two-degree water without a wet suit. She tells us how, through training and by taking advantage of her naturally plump physique, she is able to create more heat in the water than she loses. Lynne Cox has swum the Mediterranean, the three-mile Strait of Messina, under the ancient bridges of Kunning Lake, below the old summer palace of the emperor of China in Beijing. Breaking records no longer interests her. She writes about the ways in which these swims instead became vehicles for personal goals, how she sees herself as the lone swimmer among the waves, pitting her courage against the odds, drawn to dangerous places and treacherous waters that, since ancient times, have challenged sailors in ships. From the Hardcover edition.

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To Mom and Dad Contents 23 Acknowledgments I would like to thank Allen - photo 1
To Mom and Dad Contents 23 Acknowledgments I would like to thank Allen - photo 2

To Mom and Dad

Contents

23

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Allen Daviau; Anne Rice; Arthur Sulzberger Jr.; Vicky Wilson, my editor; and Martha Kaplan, my agent, for all their help in getting this book published.

I would like to also thank David Remnick, Dorothy Wickenden, and Cressida Leyshon at The New Yorker for their support and for publishing my article Swimming to Antarctica.

Thank you to my grandfather, Arthur Daviau, M.D., for his support and his great genes.

And thank you to Kenny Hawkins, Dusty Nicol, Linda Halker, and everyone at Knopf for their help in transforming my manuscript into a book. Its been a big dream for so many years, and finally an incredible reality.

Lastly, thank you to all my family and friends who believed in me and in this story for so many years. Thank you all very much!

PROLOGUE
A Cold Day in August

It is August 7, 1987, and I am swimming across the Bering Sea. I am somewhere nearor acrossthe U.S.-Soviet border. The water stings. Its icy cold. My face feels as if it has been shot full of novocaine and its separating from my skull. Its as if Im swimming naked into a blizzard. My hands are numb, and they ache deep down through the bone. I cant tell if they are pulling any water. They feel as though they are becoming detached from my body. I look down at them through the ash-colored water: they are splotchy and bluish white; they are the hands of a dead person. I take a tight, nervous breath. Suddenly it occurs to me that my life is escaping through my hands.

This frigid and ominous sea is behaving like an enormous vampire slowly sucking the warmth, the life from my body, and I think, Oh my God, pick up your pace. Swim faster, faster. Youve got to go as fast as you can. Youve got to create more heat. Or you will die!

I try to lift my arms over more rapidly. They are sore and sluggish. I am tired. I have been sprinting, swimming as fast as I can go, for more than an hour. But I sense that I am fading, becoming less of myself. Is my blood sugar dropping? Is that why I feel so strange? Or is my body temperature plunging? Am I hypothermic? Systematically I check my body. My lips feel pickled; my throat is parched and raw from the briny water. I want to stop to drink some fresh water and catch my breath. But the water is too cold to allow me to pause for even a moment. If I do, more heat will be drained from my body, heat that I will never regain.

Through foggy goggles, I continue monitoring my body. Ive never pushed myself this far. The coldest water Ive ever swum in was thirty-eight degrees in Glacier Bay Alaska, and that was only for twenty-eight minutes. This swim is five times longer. I am afraid of going beyond the point of no return. The problem is that my brain could cool down without my being aware of it, which would cause a dangerous loss of judgment. I glance at my shoulders and arms: they are as red as lobsters. This is a very good sign. My body is fighting to protect itself from the cold by employing a defense mechanism called vasoconstriction. It is diverting blood flow away from my hands and feet, arms and legs to the core of my body; it is keeping my brain and vital organs warm so they will continue to function normally.

I reach out and pull faster and, through muscle movement, try to create heat more quickly than I am losing it. My breaths are short and rapid, and my chest is heaving. My heart is pounding. I am afraid.

The fog is growing heavier; the air is saturated and raw. It feels as though I am trying to breathe through a wet blanket. With each breath, the chill rolls deeper into my lungs. Now I am cooling down from the inside out. I cant help myself; I think of David Yudovin.

David was a seasoned long-distance swimmer who, during an attempt to swim from Anacapa Island to the California mainland, technically died from hypothermia. His body tried to fight the cold by shunting the blood flow to his brain and vital organs. For a period of time, his core was protected. But at some critical point the blood vessels in his extremities became paralyzed. Blood rushed from his core to his hands and feet, where it was cooled by the fifty-eight-degree water; when it flowed back into his torso, it caused his core temperature to drop. As a result, David became disoriented. His swimming speed dropped, and then his heart went into atrial fibrillation. As he continued to cool down, his heart became less functional, until it suddenly stopped beating altogether.

There had been warning signs: his lips were purple, he was shivering, and his shoulders had turned blue. But his crew didnt recognize the severity of the situation. When they spoke to David, he said he was doing okay, and the decrease in his body temperature was so gradual, they didnt notice his deteriorating condition. Neither did David. His brain had been cooled down so far that he wasnt able to recognize the warning signs. He had no idea he was dying.

At the hospital in Ventura doctors and nurses shot Adrenalin directly into his heart and repeatedly shocked his heart with a defibrillator. They warmed his blood and had him breathe warmed oxygen. An hour and fifty minutes after his initial cardiac arrest, the medical team revived David. He had been lucky.

Will I be that lucky? The water here is twenty degrees colder. Will I be able to recognize if Ive gone too far?

Yes. Yes. I will. I can do this. Ive broken the world records for the English Channel, Ive swum across the frigid waters of the Strait of Magellan, and Ive done swims in icy waters where no one else has ever survived.

I can do it.

Thank God (or Ben & Jerrys) for my body fat; its insulating me from the cold. Still, the cold is moving deep into the marrow of my bones. Chills are curling up my spine and spreading out across my shoulders. My teeth are clenched and my lips are quivering. My muscles are as tight as boards.

I am pushing myself to the limit. But Ive got to do this. This swim is not about me. Its about all of us.

Its about doing something thats going to make a positive difference in the world. For eleven years, I have hoped when there was no reason to hope. I have believed when there was little to believe. For the last forty-two years weve been engaged in a Cold War with the Soviets. Somehow it has to be stopped. I believe that this swim will create a thaw in the Cold War. I cannot fail. If I die doing this, the Soviets will regret giving me permission to make this swim. I cant let that happen. Swim faster! Dont focus on the cold or the pain. Dont give any energy to it. Focus on the finish. Swim faster.

I think of my parents, brother, and sisters, of friends and of the people who have gotten me this far. I conjure up their faces in my minds eye. This gives me energy, and I imagine how wonderful it will feel to embrace the people who are waiting for us on Big Diomede Island and to hold their warm hands. This is inspiring. I replay a sentence in my head: Hand to hand, heart to heart, we can change the world. This is what I have grown to believe.

With every part of my being I am reaching forward, racing against time and the pervasively cold sea.

I lift my head and look up.

Something is very wrong.

Out in front of me, to the left and to the right, are the two thirty-foot-long walrus-skin boats that are supposed to be guiding and protecting me. On board the one to the right is a group of physicians who are monitoring me during the swim. To the left is a boatful of journalists huddled against the chill. Inuit guidesEskimos who live on Little Diomede Islandare driving the walrus-skin boats. They are veering away from each other.

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