Big Diomede · tomorrow The Width of a Dayan atlas of the Diomede Islands Little Diomede · today
  1. The Width of a Day
  2. Threads

a thread from chapter VI

Swimming into tomorrow

Two hours in water a few degrees above freezing, across a border nobody was allowed to cross, and out of one day into the next.

eleven yearsAsking permission

Lynne Cox, a long-distance swimmer from California, spent about eleven years writing to Soviet leaders for permission to swim from Little Diomede to Big Diomede.1,2 It came through about a day before she swam.3

August 7, 1987Into the fog

She set off from Little Diomede on a foggy morning, in a swimsuit, cap and goggles.3,4 Iñupiat guides followed her in walrus-skin boats; UPI counted eight “American Eskimo navigators” in two boats.4 In the fog, a Soviet vessel found her and guided her in.3

38–42 °Fthe water, by the Park Service's count and UPI's on the day
“The cold was like a huge vampire pulling the heat from my body.”
Lynne Cox, as quoted by the National Park Service3

Her route was about 2.7 miles, but the current pushed her sideways, and the International Swimming Hall of Fame says she actually swam more than five.1,3 Accounts of her time range from 2 hours 5 minutes to 2 hours 16 minutes.3,4

Somewhere out there, she crossed the date line. She left on Friday, August 7, Alaska time, and came ashore where it was already Saturday.

Big DiomedeWho was waiting

Soviet personnel pulled her out of the water, and a Soviet doctor wrapped her in hot-water bottles and a sleeping bag; her body temperature had fallen to about 94 °F.3,4 On the shore there were tents, a fish dinner, tea and music.4 “It was real hard,” she told UPI.4

While she swam, the two sides talked by radio. A Park Service oral history recalls that a man on Little Diomede and a woman on the Soviet side discovered, in that conversation, that they had the same father.5

December 8, 1987A toast

Four months later, at the White House state dinner on the day the INF arms treaty was signed, Mikhail Gorbachev spoke of her. The official transcript records him recalling “a daring American girl by the name of Lynn Cox.”6

Many retellings place that toast at the treaty signing itself. The transcript shows it was the dinner.6

The families on both shores →

Sources

  1. How an American Swimmer Melted the Ice of the Cold War, International Swimming Hall of Fame
  2. 35 years ago today: Lynne Cox's world-changing swim, ExplorersWeb, 2022
  3. Lynne Cox, U.S. National Park Service
  4. Endurance athlete Lynne Cox survived an unprecedented swim, UPI, Aug 7, 1987
  5. Hope: Tales of the Friendship Flight Era, oral histories, U.S. National Park Service
  6. Toasts at the State Dinner for General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, American Presidency Project, Dec 8, 1987
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