Finding Inspiration – Charlotte Samuels Completes Catalina Channel

Charlotte Samuels – 16 years old – Just completed Catalina on 8-4-2015 – 20 hrs, 20 minutes 44 seconds

Read her story, follow her, give her your support – this girl is on Fire!

At about 8 PM on August 3rd I boarded a boat called Outrider in San Pedro, CA. Along with me came three observers, three crew members, two kayakers and the Outrider boat crew. The entire deck was packed with supplies and people. We pulled out of dock and made our long journey by boat to Catalina Island (“long” hahaha). The wind felt strong in my face and that helped me to not get sea sick on the way over. One of the observers, Forrest, kind of scared me with reality when he told me that seasickness is very common and can impede swims and lead to vertigo in the water with can halt and end swims.

In preparation for this my crew and I were subscribed Scopolamine patches which enabled us to be aboard the boat on the choppy ride over and not become seasick. The Scopolamine patch worked so well for me that I was able to take a nap below deck for an hour of the ride over. Finally as we were approaching Catalina Island, the engine and propellers were shut off and the spotlight shone down on a little beach cove area called Doctors’ Cove. I examined the area. It was shrouded in darkness and the bright lights of the boat seemed to be out of place around this beautiful island. My friend and crew member Devon helped me put on vaseline and other people attached glow sticks to my suit so that I would be visible in the endless darkness. My dad and my uncle, both members of my crew, stood next to me on the edge of the boat as we examined the darkness. Seals jumped around attempting to catch fish and the water glowed with the boat lights beneath us. I said goodbye to everyone and once I was all coated with Vaseline and ready to go I jumped in off into the water.

A strange chill immediately shook me even though the water was around 70 degrees. Darkness covered my entire. Behind me I heard a splash and looked up to see Devon all ready to swim the first half hour of the swim with me. The spotlight was shining bright on the cove where we would have to exit the water and then I would have to give a signal when I was ready to enter the water to begin my swim. We swam over to the pebbly beach and Lee, one of the kayakers, was already in the water ready to guide us. She had glow sticks all over the kayak and all over herself including glowing and flashing Mickey ears. I picked up a rock and have it to Devon to put in her suit so that I could have it after the swim in memory. I raised my hand allowing everyone on the boat to know that I was ready to begin and As soon as my toe touched the water, the clock started running.

I pushed off into the kelp and inky water with Devon by my side. Soon Lee was by my side and Devon and I were sandwiched in between the boat (also alive with glow sticks) and the kayak. Devon paced me and helped me get settled into a comfortable rhythm and then she exited the water after my first swim. Alone in the water I suddenly began to recognize that I had this bone chilling sensation throughout my entire body. My legs felt shaky and my teeth were even chattering for a little bit. I asked for warm feeds for a while which helped. This was my first time swimming at night and it was new and different to me. I enjoyed seeing the bioluminescence in the water as it danced around my fingertips whenever I pulled. It was like I was falling into a dark sky filled with stars though I was truly looking down into an abyss glowing with luminescent colors. The night felt truly lonely. The chop was substantial and I later found out that at times I was only progressing on a .5 mph speed due to currents making me swim practically in place. At times I felt as though I was hallucinating-I thought I saw a hand in the water and I mistook the kayaker for a ship. The thoughts I had at night were truly disturbing and it felt as though it were all a dream and any second I would wake up.

Ambient light made the sky glow dimly in the distance. At one feed, I stopped to adjust my goggles and would up taking them off all together. As I was adjusting them I looked up. A half moon lit up the sky and stars sprinkled the heavens above me. There were stars both in the skies with starlight and in the seas with the bioluminescence. Night felt hazy and lonely. At the next feed I asked Forrest how much longer I had until sunrise. He told me that I had 2 more hours. In my head I told myself that two more hours just meant 4 more feeds and then Devon would get in with me and swim for the first 30 minutes of sunrise. I put my head down and tried as hard as I could not to get distracted by my thoughts. When I breathed on the right side I could see that the sky was beginning to light up yet on my left it was still pitch black. I told myself that it is always darkest before the dawn and for some reason at dawn all the loneliness and the thoughts would go away. And sure as moon turns to sun they did. There wasn’t an actual “sunrise” per say but the sky lot up blue and orange and Devon hopped in the water.

The water quickly turned a grayish-blue and I was no longer surrounded by endless darkness above or below me. With sun I felt more alive and suddenly all of my tiredness passed. There was less chop now but the swells still bumped me around left and right. It was good to have Devon in the water and even while swimming she was keeping my spirits up. Out of no where I felt an electric shock I various places on my body. First it was on my thigh and then there was a stinging pain on my waist and then out of no where I felt it on my right ear and the right side of my face. I did my best not to stop and try to get the jellies off of me- they weren’t visible and if they were I would have dodged them. I looked to my left and saw that Devon seemed to be getting stung too. She told the kayaker and the boat crew and they told us to keep going and try to get through it. The fields of jellyfish went on for miles and even after they appeared randomly and would sting me in the face. After the 30 minutes were up, Devon climbed out of the water and I stopped for a feed. It felt as though I had been swimming forever.

I’m not sure why I did this but I asked Forrest if my swim was going to be under 15 hours. And he said no. And my heart dropped to my stomach. 15 hours would’ve been considered “long” by most and I was confused as to why I wasn’t on my projectile of what I believe I would be able to complete the channel in. However, open water is far from predictable. I asked Forrest if he thought I would finish and he said if I keep on doing the same and better that yes I would finish. Then right before I started swimming off of my feed he shouted to me, “Charlotte! Be powerful.” And I was. I dug deep in the water for the next few hours following. My stroke rate had greatly increased as opposed to what it was in the inky darkness. At each feed they told me I was doing great yet every time I looked ahead, all I could see was endless ocean. Land was no where insight. This frustrated me. Although you’re never supposed to look back in the Catalina Channel swim, I did and I saw Catalina behind me. It looked like an eerie mountain in the distance.

I knew land was somewhere up ahead of me and I told myself that I just had to keep doing what I had been doing and I would get there. I thought about the heartbreak of not finishing and I thought about the unknown that was still ahead and all the things that could impede me. When I’d thought about that enough, I began to think about my finish. Although it was hours and miles away, the thought of climbing out on the rocks and finally being done made me have a thirst to keep going. And I did. For hours and hours. It was so long that I could even see the sun move through the sky. It felt endless and infinite and I wasn’t sure if it was in a good way. For a while it felt like the sight of land would never appear. I wonder if everyone would tell me if the land appeared or if my swim was a lost cause and they just wanted to see how long I could go without stopping. All these negative thoughts made me sick and I had to physically make a point to stop myself from thinking them. At this point I had been swimming for at least 10 hours and probably longer. And still no land. It was as though as sad as I could be that I was not seeing the land, the more it made me want to keep going. The thought of quitting after 10 hours was not inside of me. I could never quit after what I had been through. I thought about how I never wanted to feel that lonely and scared of my own mind again if I had to come back and re-do my Catalina Channel swim. That was what drove me. I thought about how much I wanted it to end and the ONLY thing I wanted more than that was to NOT have to do it again. So for me it was never a question of stopping. Because I was never going to stop.

I felt deep and strong with my swimming. And if I’ve learned anything with my swimming and with my life I’ve learned the most important 3 words. Everything is temporary. The darkness was temporary. The jellies stinging my face were temporary. The feelings of nausea from the choppiness and swells went away soon enough and that was temporary. And sometime, maybe not anytime soon, my swim would be over, I would climb up on those rocks and stand up and they would declare me a successful finisher and all that would have happened up until that point would be temporary too. And that’s what kept me going. And out of absolutely no where I looked up at one feed and I saw it. Smoggy and so far away, yet completely visible against the sky. The peaks of land up in the vastness that were visible enough for me to see with goggles on. Land. California. And somewhere up ahead was my finish.

For a while this kept my spirits up. Except for when feeds and more feeds went by and the land did not seem to be getting any closer. There it was and I kept going and going and there it was the same distance as it had been before. I knew that there were times during this swim were I had been swimming in place and I asked my kayaker, Lee, if we were making progress. She said that I was doing great and absolutely making progress and that it was getting closer. I didn’t see it that way but I kept swimming because at least someone else did. Open water requires you to put your trust in a lot of other people. I had to trust the kayakers and my crew that I was still making headway. And slowly but surely, I think I actually may have been. At a feed following that one, Lee told me that she could see detail on the land and at the feed after that she said that she could see the colors of the houses. There was no way I was stopping now.

Devon hopped in one more time and she made me laugh by making funny faces and hand gestures under the water. Later on once she was out of the water she began writing on the whiteboard. The tradition of whiting on the whiteboard for me began at Ederle where she would write short cute messages and I would read them when I was taking breaths during swimming. For this swim, it turned out that Devon had been putting out posts on Facebook asking for personalized messages that she could write to me. Suddenly with each feed I got a new feed. Each of them touched me in different and deep ways. I knew that there were lots of people out there rooting for me and lots of people who still had faith in me even though I had been in the water for 13+ hours. Some of the messages such as the one that my friend Jim wrote to me actually made me tear up. Jim’s message said that “I must do this because then we could claim the youngest and oldest as we had during MIMS this year” I thought about how grueling I believed MIMS was and how much more grueling this was. I realized that your levels of pain and tolerance changed on your environment and surroundings and you find what is within you based on each experience. I kept pushing and soon I could see the brown on the land.

At a feed Lee pointed out that there was a mola mola right next to me in the water. Once I started swimming, I could see the mola mola under the water! It was very beautiful and different than anything I’d seen and that boosted my spirits. Soon after I had to really pick it up because we were passing a shipping lane. I dug deep and tried to carry it over into the time after we had passed the lane. Land seemed closer than ever but it never came. Every time for the whole swim that I asked how far I had gone, no one told me. I realized after a while that they didn’t want to discourage me and that they had probably all made a pact not to tell me. Every time I asked what direction I should aim the kayakers would just tell me to follow the boat which confused and frustrated me. The chop was picking up and I was getting tossed around and at times swimming and getting pushed far too close to the boat or the kayak. I dug as deep as I could. I told myself that if I could count to 1000 strokes several times that maybe that could bring me closer. This continued for hours and hours and the shore did not seem to be visibly closer whatsoever.

I was frustrated and tired and I knew that I had been in the water for 17 hours at least based on what time I thought it was. At my next feed I took my goggles off and I looked at my crew. I told them I didn’t know what was going on, I was confused and no one was telling me where to aim and I didn’t get why I wasn’t getting closer. They all told me to listen to Devon. Devon told me to look at her. I looked up to see her smiling face. She started off telling me that I was doing amazing and that everyone loved me and was rooting for me. Then she told me that I had 5 miles to the finish and that I had to dig as deep as I could and that if I dug deep and picked it up, the end would come. She told me that she would get in with me for the finish as she had agreed. Then she told me that I need to find it within myself. I told myself maybe 3 more hours of fighting chop and I could perhaps finally touch land. Everyone began to cheer louder than ever before and I picked it up. It felt as though a switch had been turned on inside of me. My stroke rate had increased and I felt myself plowing through the water. They cheered and cheered and cheered and my kayaker Jane smiled at me from on the kayak even though the chop was tossing her around too.

My thoughts began to scare me again at times but for the most part I was able to talk myself out of the things I was thinking about. It felt like forever. But at every feed they told me that I was making headway even against the wind and chop. They told me to kick hard to get circulation in my legs so I would have feeling in them when it was time to climb over the rocks. It seemed forever until Devon was going to get in and out of no where I felt a cold rush on water beneath me. I knew that the last three miles of this swim caused many swimmers to suffer hypothermia. I later learned that the temperature had dropped quickly and dramatically from a 72 to between a 55-57. I felt cold but there was no way anything was going to impede me now. The sun was low in the sky and I worried about what would happen if I didn’t beat the sunset. What would happen if it became dark again? They couldn’t put on more glow sticks, could they? I settled with the vision that I would be pulled if it turned to night again which turned out to not be true but it didn’t matter.

The moon appeared in the sky but the sun was still there and the rest of the sky was turning the same beautiful colors as it had around the hazy sunrise. To my left I saw Devon in her bathing suit cheering loudly from the boat. It was almost the end. Devon eventually jumped in and swam while cheering loudly during her breaths as well as under the water. Everyone was smiling and cheering and I felt like crying and I just kept going and tried to be stronger than ever. The cold was seeping into me but I distracted myself and kept seeing the end in my mind. Soon I felt rushes of water behind me and I could see the kept and rocks below me.

The rocks were coming closer and closer and faster and I realized that the waves were pushing us in. Devon told me to grab hold of the rocks once it was shallow enough and hold onto them as they pulled out to the ocean again. My body didn’t feel normal sitting up on the wet rocks. I tried hard to hold on but got pulled back a bit at first. Then I was able to steady myself and start climbing. I went slowly since I couldn’t feel my body well. It felt weird to be doing anything but swimming. Eventually I got to a place were the rocks were no longer wet and I slowly stood up into an upright position. I got a massive thumbs up and cheers from the boat behind me but as I looked up I saw that above me was a huge crowd of people I did not know as well as lots of cameras and news people who were crowding around me.

My brother and mom shouted at them not to touch me or I might be disqualified. I felt much too tired to talk to them but I tried. My words could barely come out and I felt like I was going to pass out. I had been horizontal for 20+ hours and now I was vertical and the feeling was new and uncomfortable for me. I did not want to talk to the news people and I needed to get back to the boat so I would not suffer hypothermia. I saw my feet looking a bluish color and I think Devon and my mom were worried too. I felt as though every piece of me was drained out and it told them I would not be able to make it back to the boat. They told me I had to. I went beyond what was within me as I re-entered that freezing water and swam back to the boat. On the boat everyone wrapped me in warm blankets and hugged me and gave me warm drinks. I didn’t feel like I actually existed. It almost felt as though I was watching this all happen to me.

I fell asleep almost immediately. This swim took every ounce of everything I had. And it drained me to having nothing left inside. I’ve never experienced anything like that on a swim before. I never thought it would have taken me so long and I never thought I could go for 20+ hours because I was never training for a swim that long. I still can’t fully express how I am feeling but I can say with no doubt that I do feel changed. The swim felt endless and Odyssey-like. Never have I been so happy to be able to sleep when I am tired or eat solid foods instead of Carbo-Pro in a Nalgene bottle. I can say from the bottom of my heart that I will always find the strength that is inside of me and if it isn’t there already, that I will create it. And I will never fall into despair because I can see that the end is in reach even if it is very far away. I could not have ever done something like this on my own so I would like to thank everyone that helped me.

Thank you to my absolutely amazing crew. Thank you Devon for swimming with me and never letting my spirits drop and for writing on the whiteboard and informing everyone that wasn’t there as to what was going on and thank you for always being like a big sister to me. Thank you to my dad for being my biggest fan and being supportive as always and never giving up on me, never sleeping or resting or taking your eyes off of me. Thank you to my Uncle Lawrence, the rookie of the crew who did an amazing job with reaching out to the media and being so positive and supportive. Thank you to all 3 of my observers. Forrest, Jodi, and Bob who were so loving and kind and supportive and who have me lots of love and comfort throughout and after the swim. Thank you to the Outrider crew who kept me safe and who usually has much shorter swims but never gave up on me and my 20+ hour swim. Thank you to my 2 fantastic kayakers Lee and Jane who kept me safe and kept my spirits up. Thank you to my family who couldn’t come on the boat but supported and cheered for me from the mainland. Thank you to everyone who wasn’t on the boat but who supported me and sent love and good vibes whether it be from California or all the way on the other side of the world. I need every single one of you to make it happen. With endless humility and gratitude I thank every single person that allowed this to happen for me and for me to be successful. One day can bend your life and this one surely bent mine. Ad astra per aspera. — with Camille Uttaro Stern and 8 others at Terranea Cove.