A 55-year-old grandmother swam for 17 hours across the Gulf of the Farallones this weekend, braving jellyfish, darkness, fog, freezing water and the shark-infested “Red Triangle” to develop into the primary person in history to finish the treacherous outbound route .
For Amy Appelhans Gubser of Pacifica, Friday was like several other day. As usual, she worked 10 hours in fetal cardiology at UC San Francisco.
Then at 3:25 a.m. Saturday, with out a wetsuit, she jumped from a ship into the dark water beneath the Golden Gate Bridge and commenced swimming. It only stopped when it reached a bobbing buoy on Southeast Farallon Island, 29.7 miles away, at dusk.
Members of her support team, monitoring her safety from a fishing boat, erupted in cheers.
“When I touched it, I was so grateful. Not only did I have the opportunity to complete this swim, but it was so flawless,” she said Monday after riding her bike to the dentist, her voice still hoarse from being immersed in salt water.
But in the world of extreme marathon swimming, the miles between the Farallon Islands and San Francisco are considered the toughest in the world – with cold, rough water, whipping winds, swirling currents and hungry carnivores.
To date, only five people have completed this swim. They went the other way – from the Farallones to San Francisco, which is also a big challenge since you have to adjust the tides to get through the Golden Gate. But the water gets warmer and less dangerous over time.
The planning took five years, with Gubser traversing Lake Tahoe, Monterey Bay, the Catalina Channel, the Strait of Gibraltar and the notoriously difficult channel between Ireland and Scotland, among other places.
To guide her journey, she followed the fishing boat Pacific Rival, piloted by Captain Chad Dahlber, lost above the fog and clouded by a red tide below the water's surface. A team of seven other people on board the ship, all trained in sea rescue and cardiopulmonary resuscitation, also assisted them.
The food was thrown into the water on ropes. Tourniquets and other first aid equipment were on deck in case of a shark attack. The U.S. Coast Guard wanted to know the color of her swimsuit — black and white to mimic a wild orca — in case a rescue was needed.
There have been accolades from across the global community for “open water” swimming, a sport inspired first by Captain Matthew Webb's swim across the English Channel in 1875 and more recently by films such as “Nyad,” which follows the extraordinary journey of Diane Nyad documented, popularized from Havana to Key West.
“Congratulations, Amy, on this amazing world-class feat of cold water endurance and athleticism,” wrote the Marathon Swimmers Federation.
“Support swimmers” accompanied them for the primary few miles; She was later joined by kayaker John Chapman, who sang upbeat '80s tunes.
But her happiest hours were spent alone.
“When I swim, it's essentially the most restful time for my mind,” she said, “because I can just decelerate. I lose track of time.”
“I find it very peaceful. It's one of the few moments where my brain actually calms down,” said Gubser, who trained as a pediatric intensive care nurse and now coordinates high-risk fetal care. “For me, swimming is more effortless, easier than walking. It feels like I can go on forever.”
Sometimes she counts – gets to 77 after which repeats. She writes poems. She imagines solutions to the world's biggest problems. She plays songs in her head and infrequently fixates on the identical verse over and once more.
And she has fun with the curiosities of the ocean.
“We were swarmed by bats!” she said. “It was so funny. One landed on a crew member. They came out of nowhere. What were they doing there?”
Gubser was taught to swim as a toddler by her mother, a lifeguard. She grew up on the beaches of Southern California and attended the University of Michigan on a swimming scholarship. Her husband, Greg Gubser, is an assistant harbor master on the Port of San Mateo County.
She trains by swimming many miles every week within the cool San Francisco Bay with other members of the South End Rowing Club on the Aquatic Park, along with training in a Burlingame pool to perfect her technique. She weighs over 200 kilos, a deliberate try and stave off hypothermia.
Saturday was chosen since it offered a powerful ebb current. With the pull of a brand new moon, the tides fluctuated from 6 feet to minus 9 feet, sending hundreds of thousands of gallons of water rushing through the Golden Gate and hurling it into the Pacific.
And the wind was unusually calm, never exceeding seven knots. The water was glassy, without the white fountains of water to contend with.
“We were waiting for the perfect weather,” she said. On board the boat, she ate rice cakes topped with peanut butter and honey to realize energy. She was only wearing her suit, a hat and goggles.
But before Gubser even got wet, he faced a challenge: a passing container ship. This delayed their launch, which was precisely timed to the optimal tides, currents and the time needed to get to safety before the sharks' evening feeding times.
Once within the water, one other container ship passed by, lower than 200 feet away.
“I could hear the engines underwater,” she said. “It was honking and all I could see were these lights in the fog, so I knew it was close. For the first 12 miles you play “Frogger” with container ships because that’s the shipping route.”
But then Mother Nature offered some help. Aboard a raging low tide, Gubser covered a few third of her route in only 4 hours.
“Mr. Toad's Wild Ride,” she joked. She glowed in the dead of night and wore a small blue light on her head and a green light on her butt.
Miles further out, the tide was receding – and she or he needed to fortify herself. She accomplished the remaining distance in 13 hours, swimming freestyle all the time. Every half hour, the crew would top her container with three ounces of chicken bone broth, accompanied by a carbohydrate drink for energy. When she was sleepy, they gave her a caffeinated porridge.
The jellyfish got here in swarms and stung an estimated 20 times.
The water was cloudy, which was on account of a red algae bloom. Enveloped in fog, “it was almost like a sensory deprivation chamber. The sky was gray and the water was brown. I couldn’t see past my fingertips.”
As she approached the Farallon Escarpment — which drops steeply to a depth of over 6,000 feet — the water temperature dropped to 43 degrees.
Concerned, her crew watched as her skin turned pale. They gave her hot chocolate and warm water to pour over her neck and hands. But in line with the principles, she wasn't allowed to the touch the boat.
“I knew I would feel terrible if I didn’t finish at that point,” she said. “I have children and grandchildren and I wanted them to be proud of me.”
“I dug deep,” she said. “I wanted to show that you can do anything if you put your mind to something.”
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