Swimming to Antarctica by Lynne Cox

prepared, and I was confident.
    Running my hands along the back of my head, I parted my long brown hair, wound one side around my hand and stuffed it into my white cap, then did the same for the other side. The waiting was making me anxious.
    Ron finally came ashore. He was speaking on the walkie-talkie with my father, who had come along as the team physician. My father was checking with Ron, asking him where he could find the blankets on the lead boat in case someone went into hypothermia and needed to be bundled up. I could hear the sounds of the paddlers moving their paddleboards into position; it was so black that someone ran into someone else. This all seemed to be taking an incredibly long amount of time. I worried again about cooling off.
    Finally, Ron called us over for a last-minute pep talk. “In a few minutes, Stockwell and Johnson, in the dory, are going to turn on a spotlight so they can see you enter the water. Mr. Yeo is going to fire the starting gun, then accompany you on the paddleboard. I want you to stay close together. It is very dark here. Darker than I expected it to be. We don’t want to lose any of you in the water. If there is a problem, I don’t want you stopping. We won’t be able to see you if you stop. You’re going to have to keep swimming with your head up and tell us what your problem is. I don’t think you’re going to have any problems. The water is calm. The forecast is for light and variable winds late in the morning. I don’t think we could have a better day for this. You’ve trained hard. You’re ready. Is everyone set?”
    “Yes,” we said. We turned and wished one another good luck, then we hugged. We walked to the edge of the ocean and Mr. Yeo said, “Okay, take your marks,” and then he fired the gun. We saw the white flash and heard the gunshot echoing off the cliff walls.
    I walked into the water, dove through the surf, and began swimming. It felt wonderful, exciting, strange, and scary knowing that I had just pushed off Catalina Island and was now swimming across the vast Pacific Ocean to the North American continent. Turning my head and breathing, I saw the universe filled with light from distant constellations. I felt even smaller, and yet somehow powerful.
    Swimming was difficult. While we could see the tiny lights on the dory and on the paddleboards, we couldn’t see one another. We were on edge. There were deep-water pelagic sharks in this channel: big ones, white ones, man- and woman-eating ones. No long-distance swimmer had been attacked during a crossing, yet we knew that theywere down there somewhere and that any moment we could become a midnight snack.
    We were swimming erratically—fast, moderate, then faster—and we were unable to settle down and establish a pace. This was using way too much energy. We needed to get into our flow and maintain one speed for efficiency. The truth was that we were excited and scared. We had never swum in such blackness. We couldn’t see our own arms or our hands pulling right beneath our bodies. For safety and a sense of security, we were swimming closer than we ever did in workouts. Stacey unintentionally elbowed me in the ribs; I nearly jumped out of my skin. Overcorrecting, she cut too far left and ran into Nancy. Spooked, Nancy let out a series of bloodcurdling screams. That set off a series of chain reactions, and we ran into each other, overcompensated, and ran into someone else.
    Sharks are attracted to thrashing and splashing, sounds that resemble sick or injured fish. This is their food source. Using sensors on their snouts, they can detect electrical fields and feel, through their noses, the movement of fish and people in the water. Donald Nelson, a shark expert who did pioneering work in this field, once told me that sharks can detect even minute electrical fields emitted by fish and other animals. I wondered if they could feel the electrical impulses of our hearts. Mine was beating fast and strong. I pushed