It was poor impulse control, ignorance perhaps faith, and a valoid suppository that got me onto the boat. Possibly a slightly faulty recklessness valve, but not thrill-seeking. More just fascination. And love. Who ever are these incredible people and what are they doing? A world-record holder swimming from Durban to Umtunzini, her second, a masseuse, a photographer, a world-class surfer, a shark expert, Emil the skipper, and me. There was also a hulky man at the ski-boat club with entirely rotten teeth. But I couldn’t understand anything he said.
That morning driving to Blythedale, I chose not look at the huge rough sea. I did not look at the trees bent with wind. When I got there, I didn’t read the good conditions to launch and bad conditions to launch sign. I just saw it was there. Gracelessly – when the time came – I jumped and then slid upwards from the sea onto the boat. Someone said, Hold on and look at Emil.
Within minutes I was back in the sea. Like a car crash. But softer. And everything went white. This time it was only foam. In those seconds of being flung backwards off a launching rubber duck I had a lot of time. To wonder where the propellors were. To think of everyone. My children, my sister, my niece; my estranged best friend.
And then I popped up, out of the spray. And then another head popped up: the shark expert. And another: the surfer. At first I thought we were all On The Other Side Together. Then humiliation – they had jumped out to save me. Then relief when I realised they’d been forcefully ejected too. Gracelessly once more I slid back on. I looked at the beach longingly, I looked at the ocean. I turned to the photographer and said: I hope you got that because we could be youtube zillionaires.
Once out, rocking between two-storey swells and 40 knot winds, the more experienced among us began to change into warm clothes. I just sat there. Letting go to put on a jacket was not an option I was considering. Even when the surfer told me I would die of hypothermia, I couldn’t. I said of all the ways of dying this day presented, death by cold was the way I would prefer. Emil kept walking about the boat never spilling his coffee and laughing about how every time he came near me we went through a wave. I was begging him to therefore not. So he put a massive green oilskin on me. As compensation.
We found the swimmer in the swells. The second got on the boat, the surfer got on the kayak. The swimmer whooped with joy. I said man up Jess, she is in the actual water. And unclutched myself from the boat for one millisecond to eat a naartjie so as to not vomit. The swimmer ate every 30 minutes. She looked at me and beamed. She heard a whale singing. She heard a dolphin dialogue. She got stung on the face by a bluebottle, then on the shoulder. She smiled and took an antihistamine.
What got me through was watching her being a happy, wondrous, delighted ultra human. And looking at the land. And knowing I had swum kilometres in this sea. That if I didn’t panic it would take me back to the where the world was steadier. What got me through was deciding not to ask the second whether these were wildest seas she’d ever been in. Because the answer once we were on the beach was yes.
What got me through was her saying: We are safe with Emil, he has been on the ocean since he was six. And so once we were back I said: Thank you Emil. He said, The only other people I’ve ever tipped off the boat were famous people. And so I said, thank you again, because this was a story I could indeed use to get my own self a lot of attention. And then he said, What Sarah didn’t tell you on the boat, is the I’ve actually died twice. And I said How? and he said Drowning.
And then I turned to the masseuse and said, How did you not fall off the boat? And she very calmly said. I think horse riding.
Sarah Ferguson (half fish) holds the world-record for being the first person to swim around Easter Island (63.5km in 19 hours). Her Durban to Umtunzini swim (the Philocaly trail) will take seven days (132km). Along with many endurance swims, Sarah is the first South African to swim the Kaiwi Channel. She founded Breathe Conservation in 2012, an non-profit organisation dedicated to ridding the ocean of plastic. You can find her on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/breatheocean1/, this trip https://www.instagram.com/philocaly_trail/ and read about how she handles sharks in January’s HighLife magazine.