Famed open-water swimmer and writer Lynne Cox will speak on Vashon this Sunday at a benefit for the Vashon Seals swim team.
The Seals, a swim team for children and teens ages 6 to 18, arranged to bring Cox, also a motivational speaker, to the island as a fundraiser for the club’s reduced fee program. Her accomplishments and her message — to stretch for a goal, hold to an idea and work hard to achieve it — is something that will resonate with many people on the island, swimmers or not, said Seals coach Lisa MacLeod.
“She is inspiring,” MacLeod said. “Her achievements have been amazing. To hear firsthand about her experiences will be phenomenal.”
Many may recognize Cox as the author of “Swimming to Antarctica,” her book about swimming more than a mile in Antarctic waters in just a swimming suit, cap and goggles. Her book was published in 2004, two years after the her swim, which The Discovery Channel filmed and aired.
Cox is known for several other legendary swims around the globe from the time she was a teenager. At age 14, she and a group of teenagers from Seal Beach, California, swam the Catalina Channel, a distance of 27 miles, in 12 hours and 36 minutes. That swim spurred Cox on to others, and when she was 15 in 1972, she swam the English Channel, crossing with a time of 9 hours and 57 minutes and breaking the men’s and women’s world records. In the decades after that, Cox swam in countless bodies of water, including across the Cook Strait between the North and South Islands of New Zealand. Her time was 12 hours and 2 and a half minutes, with the tides forcing her backward for the first five hours.
Cox also became interested in breaking down barriers between countries, and in 1987, she swam across the Bering Strait as a way to open the US-Soviet border for the first time in 48 years. She needed permission from Russia to do that swim and worked toward it for 11 years, finally getting the approval from Mikhael Gorbachev.
She also grew interested in understanding and pushing the limits of the human body, which led to her swim in Antarctic waters, and in 2007, to following the route of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who led the first successful sailing of the Northwest Passage. She swam off Greenland, Baffin Island, Prudhoe Bay and in the Chukchi Sea.
Cox is currently on a book tour in the Northwest and has a personal connection with a member of the Vashon Seals board, both of which helped facilitate her coming to the island.
MacLeod said the club does fundraisers every quarter to offset the cost of the program, and this year they wanted to do something that would appeal to the whole community and inquired if Cox might be able to come.
MacLeod noted that the club has not set a price for tickets and instead will rely on donations at the event. With paying for facility fees, swimming is an expensive sport, she said, and proceeds from the event will help keep the club’s fees affordable.
When she started coaching the Seals a decade ago, MacLeod said the club had only about 20 people. Since then, it has blossomed and has some 115 people over the course of the year. It used to be that swimmers would leave the club and pursue other interests as they got older, but not anymore.
“We have a huge retention of athletes,” she said.
MacLeod added that the swim club is missing a meet to listen to Cox, but she expects it will be well worth it.
“To me it is a really exciting event,” she said. “Everyone will get something out of it.”
Lynn Cox will speak from 1 to 3 p.m. Sunday at the Vashon Theatre. A selection of her books will be available for sale, and Cox will sign books as well. Entry to the event is by donation.
