Alcatraz Journal

My Aunt Judy and me!

We did it! And I was so proud! So elated! Jonathan took pictures of me in the hours afterwards and I look euphoric. The endorphins and adrenaline were still pumping through my system. But the conditions were more treacherous than I had imagined, and not in the way I thought. Here is what happened.

Friday afternoon we arrived in San Fran. The weather was beautiful--downright hot for San Fran--a balmy 80 degrees. Unheard of. I felt good. A few hours later we went down to the Julius Kahn playground in Presidio Heights. As always, the weather was changing--rapidly. The fog horn boomed non stop, the wind was picking up. I wrapped my wool sweater tighter around my body. "What was I thinking?" I asked my husband as the hardy Monterey pines bent and creaked in the wind. Just remember this feeling, he said.

I cooked a pre-swim feast at Jonathan's Aunt's house. It was the classic Hilary happy food: Penne arrabiata, garlic bread on the finest San Fran bread, a wheaty, grainy levain, and a huge salad. I was in bed by 10.

Saturday morning Jonathan and I awoke at 4:55 to the sound of footsteps running up and down the hallway. Huge booms echoed through the dark. Then flashes of light. I struggled to open my eyes. My God! It was a thunderstorm! We are in California for Gods sake. Who ever heard of thunder in California??? Jonathan's aunt threw open our bedroom door cackling like a madwoman. "Look!" she cried. "I can't believe it."

Half of me prayed the race would be cancelled, the other half prayed it would go on. It seemed impossible. Could they throw us in the bay during a giant thunderstorm? With lightening crackling right overhead? Jonathan made me coffee, I gobbled down an instant oatmeal and a banana and we headed down to the harbor.

You feel like you are alone and crazy in the world until you meet other crazy people. At the corner of Hyde Street in the darkness and rain stood hundreds of people lining up with their IDs to get their numbers inked on their bodies, their yellow race caps and their earplugs. The race was on! No one even talked about the thunder.



We wiggled into our wet suits in the darkness, and a friend from the Y lent me bodyglide to rub on my neck so I wouldn't get a wet suit rash (I still did. I look like I got a huge hickey on a VERY exciting weekend in SF). I found my cousin Courtney (who started this whole endeavor, but was unable to swim because she got sick), her husband Mike (an amazing surfer from an extreme sports family in Santa Cruz) and my amazing Aunt Judy, ironman triathlete and all around brave, bold woman. We took endless pictures of ourselves waiting in the rain. A 25-year-old swimming in skin scared the bejesus out of me. "Why are we wearing yellow caps?" he asked a group of us. "It is the ONLY color sharks are attracted to. They have done tests. They don't like red, blue, green or black. Only yellow!" My stomach churned. "Are you serious?" I asked, over and over.



A guy on a bad mike stood up to tell us a few last things. If you are slow, aim for the Navy ship, he said, and the current will carry you back. If you are fast, aim for the masts of the Balthusah, and you will shoot right into the water park. And that was it. No more tips, no more instructions.



With that, a bagpiper in blue and green tartan and tam-o-shanter struck up a mournful tune and we followed behind him, "swim-ready" to the ferry three blocks away. It felt like a funeral. Or like we were being sent into battle. Mournful. Sad. Important! As we filed onto the ferry, wax stuck in our ears to prevent the cold water from seeping into our inner ears and making us disoriented and swimming off in the wrong direction, the bagpiper played on, saying good-bye to each us with his eyes as we filed past. Would we ever return from our journey to the watery deep?

It started to rain and the ferry pulled out into the bay, laden with 500 swimmers--about 400 in wetsuits, and a few crazy ones shivering in the chill wind in skin. There was even a woman in a bikini. We could see the kayakers and rowers--who would keep us safe and on course, straining against the water, the wind and the rain. They didn't seem to be moving. Why were we doing? Will human beings do anything if other people go with them?

At last the ferry pulled up 100 yards off Alcatraz. It is a lonely, barren island. There were white caps now, but there was no turning back. I felt like I was going to die. We were instructed to jump off the ferry three at a time in rapid succession. They had to get all of us off the boat in 3-5 minutes before the ferry got dashed on the rocks of the island. If you didn't move fast enough, they push you -- just like the white-gloved men on the Tokyo subways. And once you hit the water -- no time to catch your breath or readjust your goggles or calm your rioting mind-- no, you just had to swim so the next swimmers wouldn't land on your head.

As we moved toward the front, rubber bodies pushing us from behind, the water looking frigid and cold, we saw the first swimmers struggling against the wind and currents. They were strong, and they were not moving!

My aunt looked in my panicked eyes: "The water is alive," she said. "It will support you."

We came to the door, all three of us grabbed hands, and we were gone, on our own, lost in a cold, wet world.

There were swimmers everywhere going in what seemed like every direction, so you couldnt follow anyone. My goggles fogged up fast, and the sea was rough--on top and underneath. But I told myself to breathe and I settled into this cold, solitary isolation. They told us to stop in the middle and look up at the Bay Bridge, back at Alcatraz, and ahead at the city. I did. And it was magnificent. There is something spectacular about being tossed on the waves of a huge bay, looking up at the most beautiful bridge in the world, carried by water, yourself just a speck. completely insignificant. It was Heidigger's sublime. Then I put my head back down and started swimming.

I swam and swam. It was harder and rougher than I thought. Swimmers seemed to be doing crazy things. At certain points swimmers went across me perpendicular. At another point I thought I was swimming in the direction of the Golden Gate Bridge. Was I hallucinating from the cold?

At last I saw the yellow buoy and the gap in the breakwater. From there only 400 wind-sheltered yards to shore. As I swam by the buoy, I heard a tremendous BOOM that rocked my subterranean world. My God! Had the Golden Gate collapsed? I had never heard anything like that in the water. I raised my fogged up goggles to the sky. Lightening crackled across. Omigod! There was no way they could get us all out of the water. I got a second-wind right there, and sprinted for shore. I did not come this far to die!

Five minutes later I stumbled up the sand, under the giant clock and through the chute. The amazing Lynn Cox, who swam the Bering Strait without a wet suit (this is true!) placed a medal around my neck but I was so deliriously happy I never noticed. I pulled the wax out of my ears and shouted for joy!

My cousin had finished what seemed like hours before, my aunt was still in the water. I went down to watch the finishes. People were staggering out of the water and falling over. (Jonathan photographed strangers stumbling. He delights in documenting insane behavior) A little while later my aunt gracefully backstroked in.

A huge fireboat followed in the last swimmers and saluted us with 100 foot high streams of water.

I was alive! I did it! And I never even had time to think of a shark after I leapt into the water!

The challenge was 99% anticipation, 20% actual difficulty. But how long it has been since I challenged myself to do something utterly insane. I need to do it again soon!