Randy White - Twelve Mile Limit

The psychology of group hysteria is well documented, its roots predictable- la participation mystique, Carl Jung termed it. Hysteria can begin when one member of a group is overwhelmed by a fear or an illusion so powerful that all rational thought processes cease, sparking brain activity in the frontal lobe and the primitive limbic system. All primates are deeply coded with the instinctive fight-or-flight response. When one group member displays that limbic response, other members react immediately, and for good reason-survival is the only inviolable mandate of our species. Panic is contagious because it effectively speeds reaction time.

None of the four could ever be certain who panicked first, nor would they have reason to wonder. There was a big wave, then a second big wave that covered them like a waterfall and separated them, then a third, mountain-sized wave that sucked them down, down into blackness, tumbling them, contorting their bodies and nearly drowning one of the swimmers, so it was possible that they all panicked independently as they surfaced, one of them surfacing slightly later than the other three.

There were screams and swearing. A mouth opened skyway, begging for deliverance: Dear God! Please help us, God! Two of the swimmers vomited salt water. One independently reached out, seeking elbows and bodies, and drew a person toward her.

That’s when Amelia disappeared. One moment she was bobbing with the group. Then she was a wave ahead of them, and soon, two waves ahead. Then she was gone, like a small mist that had dissipated in blackness, leaving the shouted pleas of her companions to feather away in the wind: Don’t leave us, Amelia! Amelia, come back!

Now, it was just the three of them…

The panic had passed, replaced by a resolve that was part numbness, part survival instinct. The flashing light was their only hope. On that wide dark ocean, beneath its black rolling sky, the explosion of light was their only link to civilization, to the safety of their homes, to the reality that had abandoned them, the security of their daily lives.

Each time one or two of them faltered and began to panic again, or to lose confidence, another became assertive, assumed the leader’s role, and rallied the group’s spirits. There was no choice. They knew independently and as a group that, if they lost control again, stopped fighting and gave in to their fear, they were dead.

Endure. They had to keep struggling. They had to continue kicking, kicking, using their hands to pull them into wave after wave after wave as the sea rolled toward them. There were no other options.

It was Janet who most consistently provided encouragement and comfort. Each time they stopped to catch their breaths, or after they’d been washed by an unusually large wave, she’d remind them: “We’re going to make it. We’ll all make it. We’ve just got to stay together and keep swimming.”

Michael had regained his self-control. As an assistant junior varsity football coach of a Sarasota high school, he was accustomed to motivating people as part of his job. So was being tough and showing a tough face. He reverted to that mind-set and those skills now, and the results were unexpected: By assuming that old and familiar role, he actually did begin to feel stronger and more confident.

He would yell comments such as “Teamwork, ladies! Harder we work together, the faster we get to the tower” or “Last one to the light has to buy breakfast!”

Most heartening, though, in those first four hours adrift was that Grace Walker reassumed the personality of the woman she’d been back on land: fiercely goal-oriented and fearless. The terror and the panic she’d experienced after being dragged underwater and almost drowned by the sinking Seminole Wind had done something to her. In some inexplicable way, being so abruptly confronted with her own death had exhausted her flight response, leaving only her determination to fight. The woman was a survivor-no one who knew her ever doubted that.

With Amelia gone, they’d abandoned the human-raft technique. Janet simply wasn’t strong enough to push all three of them along with her fins. Now they swam side by side with Grace in the middle, everyone doing a slow breaststroke, riding up the front side of waves, swimming harder down the backside. They tried to keep enough distance between themselves not to bang arms but still remain close enough to be heard over the noise of the wind. For the first hour, Grace said nothing, used what energy she had left to try to keep up with the other two. But when she finally did speak, it was with the same self-assured voice people had come to expect from her: “Call me crazy, Sandman, but I think we’re getting closer to that light. I really do, man. We’re covering some ground, brother. I believe we’re gonna make it!”

Michael was so grateful to hear the confident, familiar tone, he actually shouted as he replied. “Damn right we are, Gracie! We’re kicking ass, baby, and I feel great!”

“Yeah? Well, that’s something funny ’cause I’m feeling pretty good, too. Strong, that’s the way I feel. Maybe getting stronger.”

“All of us! Lady, we’re all getting stronger. Know what? When we get back, I’ll do your laundry for a month to make this up to you. You can lay out by the pool, I’ll bring you drinks, whatever you want. We’re going to make it, sister!”

For the first time that day, Janet smiled as Grace replied, “Sandman, when we get back, the only water I want to see is in a whiskey glass. Or a fucking shower. Don’t you be mentioning water to the Princess ’till we get this shit way behind us!”

That rallied them. Kept them swimming hard for the next hour without a pause. The light was getting closer. Grace had said so. Little by little, stroke by stroke, they were fighting their way back to civilization, back into their understandable, orderly lives.

Attached to his BCD vest, Michael Sanford had a small plastic board called a navigation slate. Built into the slate was an illuminated compass. When they finally did stop to rest, Michael lifted the little board in front of his face and sighted it like a rifle toward the flashing light. Twice before that evening, he’d checked their course heading using the same simple technique. On the first sighting, the light had been at 64 degrees, which was slightly east of north. On his second sighting, the light was at 62 degrees, which meant they had drifted slightly to the south but were still making progress. Now, as he sighted the compass, he looked, then paused. He tapped the compass with his fingers as if it were not working, then took another sighting.

Janet was watching him and sensed that he was puzzled by something. She called over, “What’s wrong, Mikey?”

Sanford said, “I think this compass has gone crazy,” and aimed the slate at the light tower a third time, studied it again before he adding, “We were drifting slightly south-the current, I’m talking about. Out here there’s always some kind of ocean current. But in the last hour or so, we’re suddenly way north. The tower’s almost due east, 45 degrees. I mean we are flying. ”

“The tidal current is taking us, that’s what you’re saying?”

“An ocean current, yeah. That’s what it’s gotta be. A really strong current.”

Grace said, “Is that good? Sandman, you better be telling me that’s a good thing.”

Michael paused too long, thinking about whether he should tell the truth, wondering if he even knew the truth, before he spoke. “It doesn’t matter either way. We still have to swim to the tower. That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

That was at a little after 10 P.M. For two more hours, they battered their way eastward, and each time Michael stopped to check his compass, the tower was farther to the south. Their rest stops became longer, the time they spent swimming became shorter and shorter. Hobbyist runners train for months to do a first 26.2-mile marathon, and many run the distance in between four to five hours. The three of them had now been swimming for more than five hours, their own terrible marathon of survival, and one by one, their bodies began to fail them.