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The swim route
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It had been a long, wet winter in California. In Sunnyvale, it rained for six months. There was not a square inch of dry land to be found anywhere. Citizens secured themselves to drain pipes while they slept in their goulashes, malls were drenched, their roofs leaking, and the local newspaper was delivered wet; at Safeway, they turned off the sprinklers in the vegetable department. Every Saturday morning, I kissed Imma lightly on the cheek, not wanting to appear too emotional, and went to the swimming pool. We swam in spite of the elements, lap after lap after lap, sleet or snow, rain or rain, the cold wind searing our backs. When the hail let up, we flipped over to soak our cold and weary trapezius in the chilly water, which was forty-one degrees warmer than the air. Swimming on our backs, we watched the clouds rush by, driven by the screaming wind. The lighting towers swayed back and forth. The pigeons who usually watched us from the tops of the light fixtures were gone. The fact that even birds did not trust the anchor screws at the base of one of those towers was a sobering thought. But on we swam, welcoming the sound of thunder, knowing that it meant that lightning had struck elsewhere.
I was standing on the pool deck after the morning swim when the sun came out. Waves of joy washed over me. I stood there, watching the pigeons returning to their perch, reveling in the memories of Noah and the miracle of rejuvenation, feeling a wild delight bordering with a sense of immortality. It was then that Caroline – a well-mannered yet bashful, educated and articulate, and soft-spoken distance swimmer who spent most of her free time swimming across large bodies of open water – approached me, walking slowly and quietly so as not to frighten me. “So, do you want to do the Maui Channel Swim?”
For years, I had been avoiding the channel swim because, like most people, I felt that swimming across oceans was unnecessary. Granted, no sooner had they diverged from a path so well trodden by the ape in the forest of evolution that our ancestors were confronted with the urge to cross large bodies of water, but they worked long and hard to find alternate solutions. Some drifted on logs from Polynesia to Australia; others floated on Komodo Dragons, thinking they were logs and became extinct. The more successful attempts saw our species through an evolution from rafts to boats, sails, oars, steamships, submarines, nuclear aircraft carriers, cruise ships, six decks, five pools, armchairs, Titanic, clean towels, all-you-can-eat buffets, spas, gyms, movie theaters – why would I swim across any portion of the Pacific? Wasn’t there sufficient proof that we – as a species – belonged on land? “Sure, why not?”
Caroline’s face lit up. “Great, we have a team, and it’s only March. We never had a team assembled so long before the swim.” Could I possibly spoil such happiness after all those years of repeated refusals, which forced her to scavenge for another swimmer all around the valley? After all, what was she asking of me? That I rock on a boat for six or seven hours and jump into the abyss and swim a few strokes for the team? Why not do something outside my comfort zone? Was this not what people did to fend off the mounting burden of living past their prime?
I cannot say that I was at ease with my decision. Had this been in the waters around Australia, I thought to myself, participation would have been out of the question. After all, Australians kept their population explosion in check by swimming around their island continent, as they were killed in droves by sharks, water snakes, harmless sting rays, cone snails, crocodiles – whom they affectionately called ‘Salties’ – scorpion fish, and an assortment of box jellyfish, that came in individual as well as family sizes. It was not surprising that the Australians had the world’s highest concentration of very fast ocean-going swimmers relative to the size of their remaining population. To tilt the odds in their favor, Australians have been known to drop tourists who dared visit their continent from boats and leave them behind as bait while the locals swam away and lived to tell about it around their campfires along the Billabongs.
I saw no reason to continue this defeatist reclusion. The swim would take place in Hawaiian waters, where the jellyfish, boxy as they were, offered tourist-friendly venom – which many found agreeable. The sharks played by the rules, attacking only those whose limbs dangled to the sides of their surfboards, making them look like sea turtles. If nature did not have it in for me, there was absolutely no reason why I would not grasp this opportunity to become a hero of my destiny and a role model to my family.
“So what’s the deal?” I asked.
“The swim is in September. We usually stay at the…,” and Caroline went on to describe the essentials of the location, the route between Lanai and Maui, flight schedules, and alternate accommodations. “There are six swimmers in each team…” Failing to contain myself, I jumped in. “How far will we swim?”
“Each swimmer swims for half an hour, and then we continue in increments of ten minutes until we get to the finish line on the Kaanapali Beach.”
“Ka-na-what?”
Caroline was very patient with me, having seen people who bettered me in many ways walk away in the early hours of commitment. “Ka-Anapali, it’s a strip of beach in Maui.”
“Is Hawaiian the origin of the phrase long-time-no-B?”
Caroline took this to be a rhetorical question.
“Can’t we sail to Lanai the night before, hide among the reeds, and slyly emerge from hiding as the first swimmers reach the beach?” Caroline tried to answer, but I was desperately in love with the idea. “We could even swim a few hundred yards out and come in behind the lead swimmers and then just stroll up the beach to the finish line and claim our victory towels.”
Caroline knew me well enough to disregard my tendency to put my well-being ahead of my honor. Unfazed, she completed her explanation, “The swim is from Lanai to Maui; the boat will pick us up from the beach in front of the hotel,” she said with a gentle, smart-alecky look on her face, doing her best to put the Kibosh on my creative ideas but not on my participation. Her explanation made sense. Who, in their right mind, would swim from an inhabited, well-developed strip of five-star hotels to a barren island off the coast? Why would anyone keep swimming away from civilization, confronted by the mounting fury of the elements, just to be rewarded with a towel?
It was getting chilly standing on the deck under a cool spring sun, so we headed to the locker rooms. As I stood under the shower, enjoying the warm water, I decided not to let the news spoil the moment. Six months were a long time into the future, and I could pretend that I did not get the news until a few weeks later. By then, I would be ready to accept it. Satisfied with my rationale, I dried, dressed, drove to get some bagels, and returned home to share the news with the family.
The boys were tanning themselves on the patio under the gas heater. Imma had already set tomato salad, cream cheese, white fish spread, yogurt, eggs, tahini dip, smoked salmon, milk, sliced cucumbers diced with olive oil, fried eggplant slices, chopped tuna, and some food on the table. I cut the bagels and dropped four halves into the toaster. The smells lureed the boys to come inside. “Caroline asked me to join the channel swim this year.”
“We’re going to Hawaii?”
Come to think of it, they were right; we couldn’t just send them off to their all-amenities-included college resort without first seeing them through a week or two of living on the outside. We had to teach them what to buy and what not to buy with our credit cards and make sure their fake IDs were accepted.
“Are the girls coming from Israel?”
I looked at Imma; she looked me back, looks developed into a devoted, loving stare. “That would be a great idea,” she said.
“How long will we be staying?”
“The swim team will be there for five days,” I replied.
“So we can go for eight,” Imma concluded.
“Dad will swim the channel, and we’ll have a blast on the beach.” I was impressed by the outpour of devotion to me and thankful for how they appreciated how their young lives had turned out. Amitai called Tal, and Daniel called Yeela (yeh-eh-lah). The word spread like wildfire. Before we knew it, all the iPads and iBooks in the house were buzzing with excited Facebook chats and Skype video conferences celebrating how we were all going to Maui. With the children’s happiness at stake, I knew that Caroline’s team was secure and that the boys would not help clean the table after breakfast.
“It will be good that you get comfortable swimming for thirty minutes without stopping, finding your rhythm,” Caroline explained. Izzy and Brian listened intently. Sue was past rhythm, practicing a more advanced form of control called balance. Ed was practicing in another pool, and I was concerned with the more basic concept of buoyancy. I knew I had it and hoped I could keep it for a few months longer. Beyond that, it was a matter of putting one arm over my head into the water and pulling back just as the other arm was beginning to repeat the motion. The legs provided additional thrust, which came from the hip rather than the knee. top that with a little bit of breathing, repeat many, many times, and that’s all that there was to it.
“Thirty minutes in the ocean is more like forty minutes in the pool,” Izzy said. Eager to contribute, I voiced the opinion that time went by at the same rate independently of the medium. Izzy became defensive and opened her mouth to speak, but Brian, a natural peace monger, stepped in. “What Izzy means, Yiftah is that with all the turns, the equivalent effort would require swimming for forty minutes.”
We discussed training routines and how to build to forty-five minutes, we discussed replacement swimmers who would be on standby in case someone had to bail at the last minute, and how open water swim clinics would help us hone swimming in seas rather than pools – the essentials of which were “pick a point on the horizon and swim towards it, clouds do not qualify.” Sea sickness medication was a serious discussion topic. Izzy suggested Bonine, which apparently was available in chewable raspberry-flavored tablets. Sue preferred Marezine, but Brian had had a previous good experience with Dramamine. Gin-gin, which contained ginger, was overruled because it contained too much sugar. My concern was how significant an issue sea sickness was, considering that we would be swimming in the sea that caused it.
By now, I had made it a point to become friends with everyone and spoke only when spoken to. When my turn came, I had the opportunity to explain that I did not tend to get seasick, based on empirical evidence I had gathered during a sailboat cruise in the Grenadines two years prior. In the end, we were given the latitude to choose our own medication. We considered the water supply on the boat; someone mentioned chocolate chip cookies as a means of replenishing our energy, definitely less risky than the side effects attributed tof Gin-Gins.
Caroline spoke highly of the boat captain, who apparently had been jacking teams for one thousand dollars to watch them swim along his boat for many years. We paid bills and signed medical waivers, indemnifying the municipality of Kaanapali, the island of Maui, the state of Hawaii, the government of the United States, and the World Health Organization of any liability should we be struck by any malady, foreign or domestic, external or internal, intestinal or brachial, as we swam between Hawaiian Islands for any reason, anytime, anywhere for the next ten years. We put our signatures below a line that could not have stated more clearly that we were well aware that “the conditions in the channel could delay medical help for days and even weeks.” Our fate lay in our hands and feet and how many times we could repeat pulling them through the water.
We called ourselves ‘Team Mango’ after the Sunnyvale Middle School cesspool on Mango Street, where we first swam before Sunnyvale opened a public swimming pool at the Fremont High School. Special attention was given to the dress code. We selected orange caps, which Caroline explained would help distinguish the first swimmer, as the first wave came off the shore, and each boat had to find its team member. The team picked a bathing suit with Hawaiian colors, playful rounded cartoonish waves as a background, a pink scaly catfish fish coming out of the rectal cavity, and a glowing orange sun setting or rising over the waves covering the genitals. Sue and Caroline preferred full body armor, but Izzy could wear a two-piece suit if she wanted. Brian asked me what size I wore. Out of benevolence, I offered to let him pick the size he liked, which he did. His was the only bathing suit that fit.
Swimming is healthy for the body but is degenerative to the mind. There was only so long that I could remain disconnected from the world and sane at the same time, which is why I preferred short course pools, which offered the option to stop and seek sensory stimuli at twenty-five-yard intervals. Swimming for more than half an hour meant forgoing eighty of these opportunities in a row, a mental strain that added up. To my pleasant surprise, I found what a brilliant marketing trick dubbed as a friendly iPod- a water-resistant music player, which was just a name change, but since no one dared put their iPod in water for fear of destroying it, the waterproof brand cost exactly twice as the regular iPod. With music in my ears, I was swimming for an hour within weeks. Then, as expected, I hurt my shoulder, recovered, started swimming again, hurt my back, recovered, swam back into shape, went on a business trip, regressed somewhat, trained back into condition, rented a U-Haul, packed the family bags and asked a friend to drive our clan – two younger sons on their way to college, two older daughters, the oldest with her husband, Imma and I – to the San Jose airport. Seven hours and change, we were in the lobby of the Kaanapali beach hotel – designated as the most Hawaiian hotel on the beach, which, when stripped of the marketing bullshit, meant “bare necessities, elevator schedules subject to change.” We would have had to struggle for rooms with running water. But we had Imma for that.
***
Imma always had her priorities straight. The kids came first, followed by a placeholder for grandchildren, a hot Jacuzzi or dry sauna, my ability to provide for all this, her own well-being, and finally, my getting with the program – whatever it happened to be. No holds were barred living up to these priorities. “Why don’t you park the car while I check us in?” This was the sly queue for me to become the understudy without humiliating me in front of the children in anticipation of what she had to do. Sure enough, we were offered two rooms across the hall from each other, one of which was facing a construction site. Imma did not skip this opportunity to teach the children life skills.
“I thought the rooms we reserved had an ocean view…” I have heard Imma make this ‘ocean view’ argument in Las Vegas without batting an eye. In general, her argument was that when something we needed could be given without taking the skin off anyone’s back, why not aim high? Since beach fronts are prime real estate, many hotels are built perpendicular to the beach, so most rooms have ‘partial ocean views.’ Unlike ‘ocean view,’ which is a glass wall facing the ocean, a partial ocean view means that you have to look for the ocean, often by stretching over the balcony’s rail.
Seeing we were tired, Imma forfeited our rights to a full ocean view in favor of two adjacent rooms facing the pool, which was a refurbished frog pond but a pool nevertheless. To improve on the partial ocean views, we went out to enjoy the scenery from the beach. Daniel explained that the rock formations to our left were called the “black rock” and that the Sheraton was on its far side on higher ground, so we could not see it. He had just returned from Maui two weeks earlier, following an invitation from a friend to prepare him for the trip that would prepare him for college. You can never be too careful these days.
Imma asked the boys to find her a Jacuzzi so she could rest from the trials of the day and took me by the hand to watch the sunset. I liked holding her hand while we watched sunsets. To make more of the moment, Imma extended our benefits to beach chairs, which one normally had to rent, gently inviting me to share with her. I ran the numbers in my head – a middle-aged couple, very much in love, watching the sunset, sharing a beach chair after the rental office was closed for the day, happy to be together with their family – how criminal was that? Nervously, I sat by her side, leaned my head against hers, and put my arm over her shoulder. A wave broke on the beach. “Which one of the islands is Lanai?” She asked quietly. “Lanai is in front of us. Molokai is the island on the northern horizon, and you can see the tip of Kahoolawe south of Lanai.” Our heads were stacked on my shoulder. I was leading her view with my cheek. “You’ve done your homework.” “You don’t want me swimming to the wrong island, do you?”
The boys returned, smiling, at first not sure whether the news they were bringing was for Imma’s ears only. I sensed her nodding, indicating that I was sufficiently beachbroken.
“There is a pool and Jacuzzi at the Westin.” Imma threw my arm off. “Where’s the Westin?” They half turned and pointed to the hotel next to ours. “But don’t bring our beach towels because each hotel uses a different color.” We sat there quietly, watching the sun disappear. Tal took a few pictures. Yeela and Elad were sitting a few yards away from us, feeling the baby kicking. I counted my blessings; Imma forgave my flaws. We were able to enjoy the moment. I wouldn’t let my anxieties about the swim get in the way.
***
By the end of the following days, the boys had secured membership cards to the Westin Gym. Imma debriefed them, swelling with pride. Apparently, they were standing innocently looking through the glass pane when some Delilah in her mid-twenties caught the scent of their pheromones. “She asked if we were trainers. “ Daniel let Amitai pitch in. So we said, “No, we’re students.” They enjoyed mimicking situations and playing them back to us. “Yeah, right. Which college?” “UCLA.” They paused until the laughter subsided. “Which sport?” Who could blame Delilah? They did look like Olympic swimmers, very tall, with lean, muscular bodies. “Academics.” “So, what are you doing out here?” “Vacation.” “And why don’t you go to the Gym?” “We don’t have keys.” “Why don’t you use mine? I have two.”
“That’s my boys!” Imma hugged them, and they returned the affection. With Imma buried deep in their arms, they looked over to me. I smiled a reassuring smile. After all, they avoided that woman’s onslaught admirably. Imma extended them the rights to cook our fish on the barbecue pits at the Westin and to start working their way further down the beach. “Isn’t it that if you’ve seen the Westin, you’ve seen them all?” I asked. “Only if you’ve seen them all, have you seen them all.” Imma answered. This was a crucial phase in the boy’s upbringing. “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
We spent the days driving around the island, enjoying its views. We visited Iao Valley, where two Hawaiian kings whose names started with the letter ‘K’ fought a battle whose name also started with the letter ‘K.’ The first ‘K’ came from the big island and landed at a beach whose name started with the letter ‘K’ and, after playing the surf for a few days, decided that it was time to start a war with the local king over the first letter of their name. Since it was very difficult to tell them apart just by the first letter, the intruder decided to go by the nickname Kamehameha and his rival by the name Kalanikupule, and everyone went home after apologizing for the mutual disturbance. Hawaiian history books recorded the event at the K-K-K Battle.
Eager to provide the children with richer experiences, we woke them up at three in the morning to drive to the top of Mount Haleakala to see the sunrise, with hundreds of other enthusiasts. The boys were cold and miserable, not understanding why, after all they had done for us, we made them stand wrapped in towels and blankets in the early morning wind, waiting for a sun that was sure to come with or without their supervision. Looking at the Hawaiian Islands from the top of the mountain, one could not ignore how their volcanoes were taking turns to fill the waterways between them. “If only this one had kept on spewing for a few more millennia, the seven of us could drive to Lanai,” I thought to myself.
The following mornings, we walked along the beach from Kaanapali to have coffee at Starbucks in Lahania, watching sea turtles between the rocks near the water line along the way. I studied them closely, making sure I knew what not to look like. We enjoyed the beaches of Wailea and Ulua, but we did not swim much, as there were riptide warnings throughout the week. A storm was passing to the north of the Islands, and the weather was expected to settle by Saturday, the day of the channel swim. On Friday, the team went for a practice swim parallel to the beach. The sea was calm and pleasant. In retrospect, I know how delusional we were to think that the conditions resembled those we would face the following day, but since we couldn’t change the future, ignorance had a calming effect. Back on shore, Caroline explained the logistics for the following day. “The boat will pick us up from the beach, but we’ll have to swim to it.” “With our bags?” “I can take backpacks to the boat today; I’m going to meet the captain for a final briefing.”
With what Imma packed, I could have survived on Lanai until next year’s swim. “The boat is carrying it; why do you care?” Imma argued. “Because I have to swim back ashore with all of it.” “You can leave everything on the boat, it’s better to have extra than to miss something.” Anyone who left Imma’s supervision for a day or more received two brown bags – one with perishable goods, which lasted through the first twenty-four hours of travel, and the second with durable high-energy products, which could be consumed in bits and pieces, on the run, standing in line, while driving, anywhere, anytime. Often when on the road, I found myself looking at a dried date, torn between keeping it as a token of her caring and eating it so I could survive to return her affection. For what it was worth, it was a small load to carry. I handed the backpack to Caroline, who was careful not to flinch in spite of its unexpected weight.
***
We were on the way to Lanai aboard a charted fishing boat called Menele-Nelle. It was over thirty feet long and ten feet wide, roughly the size of the boat the shark destroyed in the movie Jaws, and much bigger than many of the recreational boats around us. Menele had an upper deck above the cabin, which stood twelve feet above the water. I climbed the ladder and stood holding on to the ropes tied between the posts as the boat pitched and rolled. The wind was surprisingly strong even though it was only seven o’clock in the morning. Seeing how tall she was, it bothered me that her name was not a palindrome and would be impossible to find if we flipped over. Digger, the deckhand, climbed up to join me; the rest of the group sought shelter below. Digger wore a baseball hat with its visor pulled low. He wore a light white cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled down to his wrists, snuggly tucked into his khaki dungarees, secured by a leather belt. He stomped in high-cut hiking boots with soft rubber soles with the laces crossed and tied firmly. He was not there for a tan.
“Morning,” he bellowed at me, shouting over the wind. I returned the greeting. “Getting stronger,” he said. “Indeed,” I said, sensing the wind. “Been bad last few days,” he continued. His subject abstinence made him somewhat difficult to understand, but being where we were pretty much narrowed down the options. “See that [squall] over there?” he asked, pointing to the straight between Molokai and Maui. I nodded. He moved his hand across Molokai. “And that [squall]?” He pointed between Molokai and Lanai; as he turned, his finger drew an arch over the horizon until he was pointing between Lanai and Kahoolawe. He looked down at the water “[Current] pretty strong.” People wearing long sleeves, dungarees, and hiking boots on weathered fishing boats always impressed upon me the notion that they knew what they were talking about when they described the winds and sea. “Yesterday they told us they expected conditions to clear today.” “Maybe tomorrow.“
Building on the information he provided, Digger went on to explain how the center of the channel where we’d to cross would be the points where winds and currents met. He was struggling to find the scientific terms. “Like swimming across the toilet bowl when it’s flushing?” I asked. My veteran attitude impressed him. He looked at me and smiled. “How many times you done this?” “This is my first.” He stopped smiling and looked me over; after a slight pause, he managed, “[you’re] fairly athletic.” I knew that term. Doctors used it when they wanted to tell middle-aged patients experiencing early signs of a chronic illness that there was nothing much they could do for them. Digger excused himself to set up fishing hooks. “Maybe catch some Tuna for lunch.” There were quite a few white caps. This was not the ocean we experienced during the practice swim; it was bluer, rougher, deeper, and wider. I stood watching Lanai come closer for a few more minutes and then descended the ladder to prepare to swim to the beach. I had agreed to be the first swimmer long before my interview with Digger.
***
“Swimmer away!” I jumped into the water, six or seven hundred yards from shore. The boat captain could not get any closer because the water was too shallow, and our keel was six feet below the waterline. I let out all the air in my lungs and allowed myself to sink a few feet as I let my muscles adjust to the temperature change. I came to the surface, swam a few vigorous strokes away from the boat so it would not pitch onto me, and took stock: my back did not cramp, my heart rate remained steady, my shoulder did not hurt, and my pull felt strong. All that could have gone wrong didn’t. From this point on, it would be one stroke at a time.
Someone forgot a pier on the shore of Lanai, giving someone the idea to start swims like this one. Other than that, there was nothing on the beach to indicate that the island was colonized. I did not want to swim between the boats that had reached the island before us, so I circled from the south and cut back towards the pier once I passed the boats closest to shore. The sea was too choppy, and sand stirred from the bottom, making the water too murky to see the reef. A rescue Jet Ski was waiting near the waterline south of the pier. I swam towards it. The pier was on my right, some swimmers walking along it, staring curiously at the likes of themselves arriving on their island, perhaps expecting to know me. The Jet Ski driver waved at me as I tried standing in the shallows. I gingerly put one foot on the bottom, fearing sea urchins – marine porcupines with blue eyes. Although I could not see it, my foot assured me that it stood on bare sand, so I put the other one down, fearing stonefish, which the first foot might well have missed. Stonefish were fossils in denial, which injected you with horribly painful, lethal venom when you stepped on them. Sand again, I had landed successfully. “Is this Lanai?” He smiled and motioned towards the far side of the pier. “You have a great day,” I shouted with somewhat hysterical sincerity. “Good luck to you, too,” he replied. Under better circumstances, we might have become friends.
I walked up the beach, past the pier, to the swimmers standing shoulder to shoulder along the waterline. Being one of the last to arrive, I had to walk to the end of the line, farther away from the pier. I surveyed my fellow swimmers, almost one hundred representatives of all walks of life, roughly six hundred, counting the rest of the teams on the boats. Apparently, there was one team still on its way, the Jet Ski bolted to pick up their first swimmer. I lamented over the fact that we had Jet Ski technology yet chose to swim. No wonder there were so few of us. Six hundred swimmers out of more than seven billion humans was a twelve million to one ratio. With less than fifteen million Jews in the world, we were allowed only one representative. Knowing that one of the only perks offered by Judaism was exemption from swimming as a means of crossing a sea, it bothered me that I was chosen by the chosen to do what the chosen were not chosen to do.
Everyone joined hands to thank their lord for his creations and ask for his blessing on their journey across the waters. Knowing that things might still be a bit tense between our lords, I took a few steps back and waited quietly and reviewed those standing closest to me, trying to pick someone I could draft off of for the first few hundred yards. Knowing that the looks of swimmers could be deceiving, I knew to avoid those with bulging muscles; these were deadweights who were the first to cramp and drown. I ruled out the young and very athletic. I also ruled out those in their seventies and eighties – they would be too fast for me – swimming ten miles a day to maintain perpetual youth. My eyes fell on a pregnant damsel in a bikini not far from where I stood. Pregnant women were known for their determination to reach safe haven. What I did not want, however, is to risk being caught with an umbilical cord around my neck for a second time in case of a premature delivery. Not being able to make up my mind, I decided to go with the flow and let the dice fall as they may.
A red flag came up, signaling the boats that the crossing was about to begin. The faster swimmers started walking forward in the water, trying to gain a few yards. I guessed that at their levels, it mattered. The flag came down, a horn sounded, and we were off, swimming through a channel formed between the boats, heading out to sea. The organizers envisioned a conveyer belt of swimmers wearing bright-colored swim caps, with boats on both sides, allowing the boats to detect the swimmers by the color of the cap when we passed between them. The problem was that while conveyor belts ran in circles, we headed in one direction, forcing boats to cross through us. The water became clearer as it became deeper and turned blue, but I couldn’t tell you which shade of blue – there are too many of them. A bit darker and a bit greener than the blue they put behind the weatherman before they superimpose the image against the weather map. It was quite beautiful actually, until my view filled with a propeller. I was swimming right towards it. I stopped, raised my head, got my bearing, and gave the boat a wide path; I doubt its driver ever saw me. I had mistakenly assumed that I could make out when an engine was close by its noise, but with so many engines so close to each other, the noise level in the water remained constant. I might as well have been crossing a freeway with my eyes shut, hoping to avoid cars by sound alone. I continued to swim, determined to cope with the fate that Digger predicted. Every now and then, I stopped to look around and correct my course. The boats were spreading out with their swimmers. I had no idea where our boat was. The team had chosen me to swim first because my stroke is so “unique,” which was a euphemism for “outlandishly awkward yet surprisingly adequate,” so it would be very easy to spot me. At the time, I suggested a Helium balloon tied to my leg, but like the rest of my ideas, they did not comply with the rules. I was plowing along, humming to myself, when Brian touched my leg, executing the tagging procedure required to ratify a swimmer exchange. Brian swam on before I had time to thank him. I paddled to the boat, keeping my head above the water as I approached it. The engine was idling, but one wrong pitch from the boat could have been just as dangerous. I grabbed the ladder. Digger helped me back on board, his stare more reassuring than before. “Still trailing the Tuna bait?” I asked. My veteran’s incongruity confused him. Izzy handed me a bottle of water, and Sue offered me a chocolate chip cookie. I took my provisions and scrambled to the upper deck like a happy monkey. I settled into a patio chair. Megan, who tagged along for the ride, was sprawled on a bench clandestinely clad, tanning herself. I surveyed the sea around us. Brian was fighting his way through the waves, leaving a trail of bubbles; he was a strong swimmer. We passed a sinking boat to our left. Dunkirk was mentioned. I suggested that we pick up some survivors and have them cook and clean for us. Megan gathered herself and went to get some beers from the captain’s stash. The boats were spread a thousand yards wide and a thousand yards deep. From the looks of it, we were in the middle of the pack. Not bad for rookies. I nibbled the cookie, drank some water, and felt pretty good about things.
Ed replaced Brian, tried to part the ocean by drinking it, and had a very rough first leg. Who ever heard of parting the sea? Caroline used the word ‘exhilarating’ as we watched Ed struggling to survive; she could not wait to get into the water. When her turn came, she dived off the boat as if it were a starting block. She swam very smoothly, slithering over the waves more than a hundred yards from the boat. If anything happened, it would have taken the boat at a minute to get to whatever was left of her, but thoughts that Kraken might not have been a myth did not seem to cross Caroline’s mind. I could have sworn she was smiling every time she turned her head to breathe.
Somewhere to our right, a nearsighted Tiger shark came up to check on one of the swimmers, who panicked and fled to the closest boat, refused to return to the water, and was disqualified for cowardice. A shark warning – instructive as level orange terror alerts – was sent over the radio. Izzy was next, a bit nervous at first, trying not to dip her hands in the water, but after a while, she settled into her natural rhythm. Sue, a seasoned veteran herself, swam swimmer roulette, daring to alternate between freestyle and breaststroke. When it was my turn to replace Sue, I made it a point to exhibit the most unique freestyle I could to erase all turtle impressions anyone’s breaststroke might have left with the sharks lurking below.
We all swam with the boat on our south side so we could see it when we breathed. The waves were from the north, making it difficult to alternate breathing, which aggravated my back, but all things considered, I had little to complain about. I adapted my strokes to the waves, held my arm in front of me for a fraction of a second longer when I dropped over a crest and skipped a breath when a wave washed over me. I even dared look all the way down into the water beneath me and saw nothing but blue. We exchanged twenty-two times in all, eight exchanges less than the maximum allowed. Caroline was fortunate to swim the final leg. She had worked hard to coordinate the swim for us, and Neptune deemed her deserving to represent us at the finish line.
An Australian team who called themselves ‘Tatter Sails’ won the race for the fifth time in a row. Rumor had it that some of them were former Olympic swimmers. The Australian captain was quoted saying that it was one of his hardest open-water races. They had been ashore for three hours by the time we reached the buoys marking the finish line, and most of the onlookers had dispersed, figuring they had better things to do than watch people swimming out of the sea carrying everything they owned in plastic garbage bags. I beached myself without incident, looking like a marine version of a homeless man.
We came in seventy-forth out of seventy nine teams that finished the race. The sea claimed two boats and fifteen teams abandoned the race . Megan was drunk beyond all recognition, and her condition worried me greatly. I called the boys to my sides and swung my arms around their shoulders. As I lifted my legs off the ground, they barely flinched under my fairly athletic weight. The boys humored me for a moment, knowing that I was overreacting because I had never been drunk. “Megan will be fine,” they assured me. I was encouraged to see how well they supported me. In the end we did not qualify for a towel, which depressed Caroline who remained catatonic until she swam a beachfront swim two days later and qualified for a trophy.
The Ritz Carlton was the one hotel beyond the boy’s reach, so the next day, I called Michael and asked if the seven of us could drop in for a visit. Michael was very much like Imma and was delighted to have us over as if he owned the place. I rested with Michael on a beach chair in his gazebo facing the beach while the rest of the family experienced the cascading pools and hot tubs in the resort higher on the hill. The following evening, we all went to the Jacuzzi at the Westin with Kaanapli Hotel beach towels. We allowed a few of the Westin hotel guests to share their hot tub with us. It was a nice way to end the summer.
