That first day’s swimming was not too taxing, but being in an entirely unfamiliar environment was all-consuming. I was used to wading into the water; a slow walk with a gradual drop-off. Now we were clambering or jumping off a boat, straight into deep water. The most striking thing was its clarity. I had never seen anything like it. In Brighton there are only a few days when the water is clear enough to see through, and even more rarely is the ocean floor visible. Now, I could see a whole new universe of sea life, from coral to creatures.
I had always known I was swimming among fish in Brighton – the occasional rows of fishermen along the shore were a bit of a giveaway. I once cheerily asked if they ever caught anything, only for one of them to hold his hands two feet apart to demonstrate the size of a mackerel. Now I could actually see the fish beneath me. A sea urchin here, a slippery silver fish there, and countless starfish on the rocky sides of the islands. The fabric of the ocean floor itself was like nothing I’d seen, with its monochrome rock and sandy bottom beneath, far too deep to reach.
Then, as I breathed, I would look up and see nothing but blue skies, and charcoal-grey rock with endless rugged trees scattered across it. It felt like tasting dense, fibrous meat after six years running and swimming alongside the saccharine-sweet Regency facades of Brighton and Hove, and within twenty-four hours I was happily adapted to the rhythm of the trip. None of the individual swims were too taxing, and we had plenty of rest and food between them, so I let the watery world become my world. We glided into caves, feeling like explorers or battle-worn Ancient Greeks seeking shelter on the way home. We bobbed in water choppy from passing oligarchs’ yachts. And we swam in still early-morning seas that were as cool and calm as a Scottish dew pond.
There was, however, one thing holding me back. Surprisingly, it was not my swimming ability; rather that the water getting into my eyes was forcing me to stop and adjust my goggles. Since my first lessons in the pool, fiddling with my goggles had been something of a nervous tic, a way of playing for time while I caught my breath and my bearings. Now, it was becoming a frequent necessity. The salt water was savage, the light was brutal, and the combination of the two was almost unbearable. The salt felt rough, as if each individual ragged sodium crystal were rubbing against either my eyes or my lips. The Vaseline around my seams, which had seemed wildly overcautious two days ago, now made perfect sense. If only I could apply something similar to my eyeballs.
Since the previous summer, I had been using a large pair of goggles. I hated the sensation of the rubber seal pressing into my eye sockets, so had selected a pair that were almost like a snorkelling mask. I had ordered a new, tighter pair for the trip. But with both pairs, a few drops of water would sneak in before long. Until now, that had been how long I would swim for at any one go without treading water to orientate myself. With these new swimming companions, and in this environment, this was far from good enough. Even the slowest group was happily swimming at a steady pace for twenty minutes at a continuous stretch. I simply couldn’t do it.
How was no one else suffering from the salt water? It was only taking about ten strokes before, each time I turned my head to breathe, that first drop was dripping from the centre of the goggles and down onto my opened eyeball. Like lemon juice on a fresh paper cut, it was a sharp sting each and every time. It didn’t matter if I tried to keep my eyes closed; the water would just pool at the edges of the goggles, becoming abrasive against the seal and bathing the soft skin around my eyes in what felt like acid.
When we stopped for lunch on the second day, in 39° heat, my eyes were streaming as if I had suffered a horrible allergic reaction. My whole face had blown up, swollen and red. Families on other tables were pointing at me as if I were some sort of cautionary tale about the dangers of terrible sunburn, or head-butting wasps. The shame was a speck of dust, though, in comparison to the pain that every single blink brought about. I walked round to the back of the taverna and poured nearly an entire bottle of fresh mineral water into my eyes. It helped, but it didn’t solve the problem.
As Mowgli set sail the next morning, I started to fret about the pain the salt would surely bring me again today. But the group was a cheery one, and I had begun to feel confident about asking questions of everyone – whether about their lives, their passions or their swimming kit. There was a mum who left her kids with her husband for a week every year to come on a trip like this, two pairs of mothers and daughters swimming together, and a myriad other intricate and personal journeys that had brought us all to this boat. There were quiet, mild-mannered teachers who had swum the Channel, alpha-male businessmen who had little sea-swimming experience but boundless determination, and those who simply loved the sea and spent all year swimming in pools, saving for a trip like this one. There was also a world of kit and devices, from mono fins that let you swim like a mermaid to handy waterproof bags that I had never encountered before. Surely someone on the boat would have something to help my eyes. I asked around about what everyone else was doing to overcome the pain of the salt water.
‘Is there some sort of wonderful spray I can use to wash my eyes out every half-hour or so?’ I casually asked.
‘What do you mean?’ replied one of the others.
‘To wash out the salt water. I can’t handle it any more, it’s stopping me from swimming properly.’ I put a little extra effort into sounding relaxed, as four pairs of eyes, including one of the instructors, were now facing my way.
‘Water shouldn’t be getting in your eyes if you’re wearing goggles.’
‘Well, a little bit always gets in after a few minutes, doesn’t it?’ A cheery smile. ‘Then you have to rinse and adjust!’
‘No. You don’t. If your goggles fit, you should never, ever take them off in the water. Your eyes should be entirely dry for the whole swim.’
Now this was news. Big news.
‘But isn’t getting water in your eyes just one of those things, like maybe a blister on a rainy run in new trainers?’
‘No. It really isn’t. This is such salty water. You can’t swim properly if you keep getting it in your eyes.’
‘Well, this I know. I just thought I had to … deal with it.’
Giggles started to break out among the group on the boat, as the rest of them gathered round.
‘So when you’re swimming, you have water in your eyes from the first few minutes?’
‘Yes. Why do you think I keep stopping?’
And with that the penny dropped. Soon people were rooting around in their bags, passing me spare goggles and helping me to put them on. It hadn’t passed me by that many of them were wearing the same brand, and most of them had extras. People were thrusting multiple goggles on me, encouraging me to try on different pairs.
‘Why are you shoving them into your eye sockets like that?’
‘So they don’t leak.’
‘They don’t need to be pressed so hard. Aren’t you smearing the lens?’
‘Yes, all the time. And my eyelashes touch the other side, which leaves smears too.’
‘My God! How have you managed to swim at all?’
Turns out I had been squeezing my goggles to my face, trying to create some sort of suction, and in doing so I’d been breaking the seal, rendering them all but useless. My nervous tic of pressing them to check the tightness was undoing any tightness there was, and the goggles I owned did not fit the shape of my face at all. Within fifteen minutes, I had caused the first proper belly laugh of the trip for some of the group (you’re welcome, guys) and also promised them that I would try wearing a different pair that afternoon in the water (thank you, Amy!).
That afternoon, I swam like I had never swum before. We were taking a crossing between the islands of Meganisi and Kithros, against currents of a strength hugely at odds with a sea that looked so flat and calm. Like a sly pupil passing notes under a school desk, the water’s surface was a picture of beauty and innocence, while beneath it was moving, churning, agitating. But I could swim uninterrupte
d. Stroke after stroke I thrust my arms into the water, determined not to disappoint the group that had done so much to help me. I looked around beneath the surface to keep an eye on how well I was keeping up with them. My visibility was now so much clearer; I could see enough to even try and match their stroke rate. In our underwater world, body type had little effect on how we moved. The strength, the glide, the ease of the reach through the water was all that counted, and these more experienced swimmers, even in the lower group, had it all. The faster swimmers were easily taking the fewest strokes, and their faces looked the most relaxed. The breath, the extension, the mindset was everything.
And the mindset was challenging. I found the sensation of travelling between two bodies of land dizzyingly intimidating. Once, managing a single length of the pool had been too much for me. Then, swimming in open water, albeit close to the shore. Then, the unknown length and depth of the river. Each time, I had persuaded myself that if I could relax and focus, I could do it. Each time, I had been proved right. The barriers were not merely physical, but mental.
However, this was something else entirely. As we reached the furthest point between the islands, the sea became so deep, it turned colours I’d never seen before. It was beyond blue; a dark purple, almost charcoal, with shimmers of yellow as the current moved on and on below us. The sighting lessons we had repeatedly taken in Brighton, teaching us how to aim for landmarks on the skyline while allowing for the movement of the tides and current, now fell into place. We found ourselves righting and re-righting our course, having to fight to stay straight rather than being dragged somewhere else entirely. That pull in the water, begun as a ripple on the other side of the world, reached me then, in that moment, as if to gently tug my sleeve and let me know that perhaps, perhaps, I was reaching the limitations of what my body could do. And the thought stayed with me all week as we approached Friday, the day of the five-kilometre swim.
We had a pre-6 a.m. start that morning, to be ready for a boat trip of over two hours. I was tired, and beginning to ache in places I had never felt before. My lips were dry from the salt water, my arms were starting to feel tight, and my back and shoulders were sore but stretched, quite unlike they had ever felt after being hunched over a desk or lifting weights at the gym. A dull tiredness hummed though me, despite a succession of early nights. Few of us were drinking in the evenings, though I had nobly had the odd glass of wine before eating almost indecent amounts of food.
The mood on the boat was noticeably quieter than usual. Up until now, I had used the time spent in transit as valuable chatting time. I had enjoyed conversations with the group, getting tips on my technique as well as hearing stories of their entrancing swims around the world and what they had meant to them. There were those for whom swimming had provided solace in desperate times, those with frantic jobs who needed the mental and physical unravelling that it encouraged, and those for whom swimming five kilometres per day in the ocean was a spot of relaxation after years of Olympic training. Today’s early start and the task ahead, though, had left us all but silent.
For me, this was agony. My nerves were mounting. Not only was it further than I had ever swum continuously – by over a kilometre – but we would be negotiating a busy channel, competing with swells and currents as well as holidaymakers’ boats and billionaires’ super-yachts. And there was the added pressure that we had been told to swim tightly in our groups during the crossing, directly alongside each other for safety: there was no option to slow down to catch my bearings, play with my goggles or indulge in panic. I would either let the team down or find myself drifting dangerously alone in the currents.
I sat in the prow of Mowgli, my legs dangling over the water as she moved slowly through the still, flat, unbroken surface, the sun rising behind the distant islands, and I felt terribly, horribly alone. I missed home with a longing I was sure only Odysseus had ever felt. For the others, this was an energetic holiday, but for me, it felt like a last chance to prove to myself what I was truly capable of before I faced the uncertainties of IVF.
Months earlier, when investigating other heroic swims, I had read about the young lovers, Leander and Hero, who had been separated by the Hellespont strait between Asia and Europe, meaning Leander had to swim towards his love every night. In Christopher Marlowe’s famous poem, Leander would tie his robes on his head to make the crossing, utterly dependent on Hero lighting a lamp for him to sight as he swam to her. But the original Greek poem, by a now unknown poet named Musaeus, contained a line that truly struck a chord. He describes Leander, swimming alone:
To reach the lamp – voyaging in strange guise.
Himself the ship, mariner, and merchandise.
As I read those lines, they crystallised what was both so liberating and so terrifying about open-water swimming: when you’re in the water, it’s all down to you. You are boat, cargo and crew. That solitude, the space to let your eyeballs slacken and your mind, breath and being follow suit – that is the essence of why we swim. A sort of vertigo swept over me, rendering me dizzy with the possibilities.
As I stared down into the water, a dolphin’s fin broke the surface and danced ahead of us. I yelped; the captain cut the engine. Emotion bubbled up in me as if I’d swallowed a lifetime of inspirational quotes and was struggling to keep them down. Sure, dolphins were lovely, I’d always thought, but I was far from being the sort of dreamer who felt that swimming with them would render my life better lived. In that instant, I saw I had been a fool. Not because the dolphins themselves were going to change the colour and texture of my life, but because only seconds before, I had been feeling so utterly alone, while mere metres from such a magnificent sight. The dolphin leapt and pranced ahead, before approaching the boat and swimming alongside it for a little while. I sobbed, overwhelmed at how appallingly close the lowest and the most beautiful moments can be to each other. Yes, we swim alone. But we can never truly know what swims alongside us.
Half an hour later, people started to ready themselves to head into the water. The tub of Vaseline was out, cotton clothing was coming off, and the volume of chatter began to rise. My heart was hammering.
It’s all about the breath, I reminded myself. Keep the breath steady and you’ll keep yourself steady.
Michael, one of my group, saw me standing on the edge of the boat, trying to take deep breaths. He was one of the swimmers I admired the most. A week ago we hadn’t known each other, but we had since discovered that he had family in Trinidad who knew my grandparents, we had books we loved in common, and he had been nothing but gentle and patient with me and my attempts in the water all week. He had no athletic ambition for the trip, but that was presumably easy for him to say, as he had the most effortless stroke I had ever seen. He moved with such ease and grace that he seemed almost amphibian. I had never – and still haven’t – seen anything as elegant in the water. Each stroke lasted an eternity. He dawdled, looked around, seemed to be putting minimal effort in yet getting maximum pleasure. A true inspiration.
He asked me if I was nervous, and we chatted about how much the swim meant to me: the challenge, the years of dreaming of Ithaca, and what might possibly be a last chance to have my body be all mine, and within the sphere of my understanding. In only ten days’ time, the regime of daily injections for the IVF would begin, and after that, possibly pregnancy. Much longed for of course, but it would change everything, representing a break from the body I had fought so hard to get to know, to master and to love.
‘We never stop learning, though, we never stop seeking,’ he said. ‘It’s like the Tennyson poem.’
I had studied ‘Ulysses’ twenty years ago and remembered it was largely concerned with a refusal to surrender, regardless of age or what life throws at us. I felt I didn’t really have the emotional space right then to start discussing England’s great Victorian poet laureate, no matter how fine a man he might have been. But I was wrong. Because as the boat slowly slowed at our spot, Michael recited the final lines of the poem to m
e:
that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
It was exactly what I needed. I would be my own Odysseus, no matter what I was presented with. Now it was time to swim.
As with the River Arun swim, I became lost in sensory overload within the first few minutes of the crossing. The water was so deep, and the light so sharp, despite it only being mid-morning. Rays of sun repeatedly pierced a deep navy-blue sea and bounced up off the bottom, creating the illusion that the ocean floor itself was floodlit with enormous beams. My borrowed goggles were tinted for precisely these conditions; even so, they were barely able to cope. The light seemed liquid, leaping up and circling me every time I drew my hand through the water, trying to push against the current that was moving with such strength beneath me.
The group had agreed that we would take a hydration stop every twenty minutes or so, to break up what was estimated to be two and a half hours of swimming. The boat following us had several sports bottles attached with string to the picnic box they were stored in. The guide threw them in to us as we trod water, kicking hard to keep afloat. We sipped giddily and took huge swigs of the mouthwash we were also offered to try and counteract the taste of the salt in our mouths.
The first hour or so went smoothly, the group moving steadily as one, our breath and stroke keeping, what we now called our little pod, tight, safe amidst the channel. About halfway, something changed. We were approaching a small island to our left. It was a tiny island, barely big enough to lay a picnic blanket on, and until this point, we had been using it as a sighting point, keeping it in view in order to steer a straight course. We were to swim north of it as we passed, which we were all on course to do. As we approached, the ocean floor came up and back within sight. I couldn’t really tell how deep it was, but I knew it was far too deep for me to reach. Still, there was some comfort in seeing the sloping patterns of the underside of the island beneath us. Until I realised it wasn’t moving.
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