Swimming to Antarctica

Lynne Cox: The currents and tides aren't mapped. They've been studying them down there for 17 years and people still don't know which way the currents move. And usually when you do a Channel swim, that's one of the basic things that you figure out ahead of time. Also, the weather there is so unstable it can go from very calm to 60 knot winds within 15 or 20 minutes. There's also the problem of ice. You can have glaciers snap off and become icebergs. And if you're swimming around them, it can be a bad thing. So those are some of the challenges. But also beyond that, there was the wildlife there, orcas, killer whales, and there were also leopard seals that are 10 feet long and weigh up to 1000 pounds and they can be aggressive. And actually, a British researcher was killed by one about three months after I was down there.

Steve Paulson: So you like this kind of danger is what you're telling me?

LC: I like this kind of exploration. I like the idea of pushing the body beyond what's been done and sort of feeling out what human beings can do and how far that reach can be. Also, the other idea is that you're sort of jumping into this unexplored territory where people haven't been before in a bathing suit, cap and goggles and just the sensation of it is so extraordinary to be in water that's 32 degrees and realize it feels so viscous because it is so thick, because it is so dense and it's just weird to have that kind of experience. But more than that, the water there is so clear you can see as if it's like moving through sky.

SP: Now, you had actually been training for this particular swim in the Antarctic for two years. What did you do to get ready for this extremely cold water?

LC: I did things I'd never done before. I sort of became a sprinter instead of training going for a five hour swims. I wound up doing an hour in my folk's backyard pool, swimming head up and waving arms as fast as I could for an hour and basically trying to simulate what I would be doing something similar to in Antarctica. The biggest thing I really needed to do was to learn how to swim more with my head up and at the same time have the power to move through the water.

SP: Now the reason for swimming with a head up is it's just too cold? You lose too much body heat if you have your head in the water?

LC:  That's exactly right. You lose up to 80 percent of your heat through your head. You know that being in Wisconsin. And so the idea is that if I could swim head up, I would be able to prolong my ability to stay in the cold. But at some point, you know, you get tired or because you're pressing your entire body against the water, you're sort of almost swimming it upright. So in order to compensate for that, I had to do a whole lot more weight training.

SP: Did you also just spend time in the cold, whether it's cold water or cold air or just kind of hanging out to try to get used to it?

LC: Yes, I went to Ushuaia, Argentina at the very tip of Argentina, and trained in the harbor there where the water temperature was about 40 degrees. And actually it was so cold that it would take me pretty much all day to psych up, to go in for my workout. And then I'd sort of put my clothes down on the beach and hopefully they wouldn't blow into the water there. Some some days, the winds were between 40 and 50 knots and it was just hard getting in. And yet I knew I had to do this to prepare for the swim in Antarctica.

SP: Now, we've been talking about some of the preparation you did to get ready for the swim in the Antarctic. One thing was to try to figure out what you do after you got out of the water because there was a real danger of hypothermia. And these temperatures could kill an ordinary person in not very many minutes.

LC: Yeah, actually, I found out from a professor at the University of Edmonton that the normal response to falling into water that's below 40 degrees is that you'll start to seize up after six or eight minutes. You won't be able to have the muscular impulses that neuromuscular impulses to make the muscles move, and so he thought this was just astonishing that I could even swim in that water. But the biggest concern I had really was for afterwards, because when you're no longer creating heat through muscle activity, you start to get cold and then you start to bring in the cool blood from the exterior body and put into your core of your body and you get what's called "after drop.".And so your temperature starts to plummet. And that's when you can have really big problems where your heart can go into arrhythmia or something worse.

So he did instead was to get a scarf and a polypropylene shirt and some pants and a friend of mine sewed pockets into them. So the pockets were on either side of my neck under my armpits in right near the hip bones. And we put hot packs in those areas.

Those things that you use when you go skiing and you get cold and you want to warm up your fingers or your toes. That's what we did. So when I finished the swim, I put those clothes on. But I also had my doctor friends who basically acted like penguins and moved in really, really close to me and hugged me and gave me their body heat. And I sort of shivered for an hour and got my temperature back up to normal.

SP: It's worth pointing out that you are a medical marvel. For some reason, temperatures that would kill a lot of other people don't [harm] you. Scientists have actually tested your body, your physiology. What have they discovered about you?

LC: They've discovered that I am able to close down the circulation to the peripheral area, to the skin, into the fingers and toes and hands and feet really rapidly and keep it closed down. If you took an untrained person and put them in the cold, you'd have that response initially. And then at some point the body would say, you know, we need to get oxygen out to those tissues. And so they would send the body would start sending surges of blood out there and then bring that cooled blood back to the core. But my body basically says lose the hands, lose the feet, keep the core warm and keep the brain and lungs and heart going. And it also will sort of send out a minute amount of blood to the extremities at the fingertip level, at toe level.

SP: Okay. So you had your practice swim. You realized you could do that. And now it was time for the real one, for the whole one mile touching land on Antarctica.  What happened?

LC: Well, we took the ship down to an area called Paradise Harbor and we were looking for beaches where I could land. There are areas that are huge glaciers and that just sort of slide right down to the ocean. And you can't swim near those glaciers because you're afraid of the falling icebergs. So we kept looking for places where we could land, but there weren't many because the wind had shifted and there the icebergs that sort of accumulated in different areas and a lot of them were the beaches. So we searched for probably half the morning until we came to a place in a harbor. And it's this just beautiful area where the beaches may maybe an eight hundred yard wide strip that's sort of terracotta stone. And there are glaciers on either side of it. And we saw that the weather was fairly calm and decided that it was a good day for a swim.

SP: So you just hopped in the water and did your mile.

LC: That's pretty much it. I mean, there's really no time to sort of quibble or second guess or wonder. The crew had been through the test when they knew what they needed to do. And so I went into the cabin to sit down and focus. And actually, I got some temperature measurements before and after the swim. And so we found that taking the core temperature before I even started the swim by temperature was up to 102.2.  And then when I finished the swim, it was down to 95.5. And with an hour it was back up to normal.

SP: How difficult was that swim?

LC: Really, really, really, really hard. It was the most difficult thing I've ever done. Mostly because I had done the test swim only a day before and it took a huge amount out of me. And also I had had some nerve damage from that first swim. So I realized that my first line of defense of being able to tell how I was doing on the peripheral area, you know, on the skin level was gone. But it was also hard because I really didn't like shivering so hard at the end of the first test swim. Your body has to work awfully hard when it's that cold to get warm again. And I think I was working as hard shivering as I had done during that first test swim. And I actually thought, you know what? I swam nine tenths of a mile. Maybe that should count as the Antarctic mile. This is all true. It's like, oh, no.

And then I thought, you know, I've come this far and this would be short as a goal. And I really should go for the mile. And I really wanted to swim to the continent. You know, not the subcontinent. And this was 32 degree water and it was just that degree more. And so I think I just decided it was time to do it when the conditions are right and we went forward.

SP: Now, it sounds just miserable. I mean, it's basically a survival test. Can you do it? Is there anything at all enjoyable about this?

LC: It's not miserable and it's not a survival test. I mean, there those are elements in it. But it's also the idea that you are jumping into unknown waters, that you are swimming through water that is so clear that you can see penguins jumping in toward the end of the swim and swimming with you. You can see them swimming through the water and see their water bubbles coming up all around you. And you are sort of in a world that nobody else has really been in in this way before or maybe even wanted to ever do it.

SP: So what did it feel like at the end when you touched land? Did you have this great sense of triumph?

LC: I had this great sense of triumph because it was as if we had done something never done. And I had a group of people around me who had shared in this idea and this dream. And I felt like it was an achievement that we really all shared.

SP:  Now, you've said this was your hardest swim that you've ever done, but you've done some pretty hard swims earlier years. I mean, there was one, for instance, down in New Zealand where you after, what, a few hours you actually were further back from where you had started from because the waves were so big.

LC: Actually, that's exactly right. I've been swimming between the north and south islands of New Zealand and there were two storms converging and we weren't aware of it because we didn't have the weather satellite stuff that we have now. And so after five hours of swimming, I was further from the finish than I had started. The current had carried me around the North Island and I was really fighting to go on.

SP: But you did go on?

LC: Well, I did go on because I had a school of dolphins who came in and started swimming with me, with the people in the boats. They were all around our boats and the water visibility was about 50 feet. And you could look down and see dolphins swimming around dolphins and they would suddenly leap out of the water and then spin and spiral and click and squeak and chatter. And they stayed with me for about an hour. And in that time, I sort of lost the sense of I can't do this anymore. So I kept going. And periodically throughout the next I don't know how many hours - the swim wound up taking 12 hours and two minutes. But throughout the swim, the dolphins would come back in moments when I didn't feel like I could go any further. And actually, toward the end of the swim, they wound up guiding us right into an area where I could land on shore.

SP: And the story then of what happened throughout New Zealand, I mean, it sounds like it almost turned into a national celebration that that you had done this swim.

LC: Actually, while I was swimming and having so many difficulties, people throughout New Zealand began calling out to the ship's radio to say, you know, Lynne, we believe in you. Keep going. There were Boy Scouts from Christchurch and beekeepers from Wellington and people all over the country, even as far as the Bay of Islands to the north, were calling and saying, keep going. And actually, the prime minister of New Zealand called and said, you have the country of New Zealand behind you. So it was really extraordinary. And actually during the swim, there were a couple ships that went across Cook Straits and they came in and raised the American flag and tooted their horns and basically showed their support. So by the time I finished the swim, pretty much all over the country, you know, the land of [mountaineer Edmund] Hillary knew about my swim. And then the next day, church bells were rung throughout the country at noon.