Swimming To Antarctica

By: Mary-Jayne McKay

The swim also fascinated scientists. Based on all they knew, Cox should be dead after that swim.

Professor Bill Keatinge of the University of London, a pioneer in the study of hypothermia, brought Cox to London for experiments in his lab.

"We were able to confirm that she can maintain stable body temperature with her head out of the water and in water temperatures as low as 44 Fahrenheit," he said. "We've got one other person that we know can do that. He was an Icelander who swam ashore from an overturned boat."

Anyone else would immediately feel the pain like an electric shock, their muscles would flail and the heartbeat would stop in minutes.

"The whole beating of the heart goes completely adrift," says Keatinge. "In technical terms, ventricular fibrillation. Then, you're dead in a matter of minutes."

Keatinge thinks Cox has somehow trained her body to keep most of her blood at her body's core and away from the skin where it's exposed to the cold. The blood stays warmer. But there is something else — call it her natural insulation.

"She's got an extremely even fat layer going right down the limbs and it's an ideal setup," he says.

Cox herself thinks this is the key to her success: "If you look at the marine mammals in Antarctica, the whales, the walruses, the seals all have body fat to stay warm. Their blubber is very dense whereas mine will be more like a cotton sweater. But I'm not going to be in as long as they are."

To reach Antarctica, Cox and her team of friends, including three doctors, set sail on a tourist boat from Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost city in the world. They traveled, through the Drake Passage to the Shetland islands. There she takes a test swim in water that is colder than 40 degrees.

The greatest danger to Cox is when she gets out of the water. Because she is no longer moving swiftly, her temperature plunges and the cold begins to assault her heart. In half an hour, she manages to sit up, but it's a struggle. It was only a practice swim, and she has never been this bad off.

In time, she warms, but she's paid a price. Her feet and hands are numb. It's nerve damage and it could be lasting. Back aboard, she rests as the ship sails south toward the colder Antarctic waters.

Two days later, the water's about as cold as water gets. Skin freezes at about 32-degrees, and this water would kill nearly anyone else in five minutes -but that's the water that Cox will be swimming in.