Swimming for his life

CATALINA ISLAND -- The Bottom Scratcher chugs into Doctor's Cove just before midnight.
Maybe it's the hour or salt air or three hours sloshing through 5-foot swells, but all 28 people aboard have grown quiet. Gone are the easy chatter and smiles flashed back at Pier C in Long Beach Harbor. This could be a long, cruel night.

"I'm not going to beat around the bush," says Greg Farrier, 40, applying Vaseline to his underarms. "I'm nervous. I'm not sure I'm a lock to finish.

"
Once he was a world-class swimmer: a member of the Mission Viejo Nadadores in their heyday. He swam alongside world-record holders and Olympians. He rose to the top 1 percent nationally. He was edged out of the Olympics by future gold medalists Jeff Rouse and David Berkoff.
Then he quit. Burned out on endless laps, 4:30 a.m. wake-up calls and near misses. For 20 years, it's haunted him – if only he hadn't quit.
"I always wonder what could've been," he says.

He graduated USC. Got a job. A wife. Three kids. He got bigger. Less athletic. And bigger still. Until one day last year he asked himself: What if?
What if I swam the Catalina Channel? No quitting. No backing out. His first trip to the pool, he couldn't finish two laps. But he stuck with it. From pool to ocean to longer swims to winter swims. In January, he swam 10 miles – in 56-degree water.

"My first big test," he says. "I was all smiles."
In March, he hit 12 miles. In April, 13½ miles. Right on schedule.
Then things went haywire: shoulder pain, sharks, doubt. He lost his job and almost his house. For 10 days, he stayed out of the water. Some would call what happened next luck. Some, divine intervention. But out of the blue, Farrier met a family that taught him about perseverance. They're on board tonight too.

"It's show time," someone below says.
Farrier poses for pictures, kisses his wife, Irene, and kids.
"I'll see you on the other side," he says.
"You can do it – I'm right there with you," she says.
The furthest he's ever swum is 14 miles. Tonight he'll attempt 22, in hopes of becoming only the 141st person ever to swim the Catalina Channel – fewer than have been in space!
Farrier walks to the stern in trunks, goggles and white swim cap. With a splash, he jumps – into the dark water, the dark night and the deep, dark unknown.

BUMP IN THE NIGHT
The English Channel gets all the glory. It's colder; the currents are stronger. But swimming Catalina Channel is further. And rarer.
Even with water temperatures at 68 degrees like tonight, it can cause hypothermia after 10 hours in the water.
"We had this guy, by daybreak he wanted to give up," says boat Capt. Greg Elliott, who's accompanied some 80 channel crossings. "They pushed and pushed him. Finally, about 10 in morning, he started to sink. We had to jump in and pull him out."
It took 41 minutes for paramedics to get a heartbeat. Elliott says the man set a record for surviving after being clinically dead.

That's hypothermia. Then there are things that go bump in the night.
"I never had a fear of sharks," says Farrier, of San Clemente.
But a fishing trip to Catalina last year ended ominously. He'd just decided on a channel swim and was scouting his trip. Halfway home, their boat broke down under overcast skies.
"We all saw something that blew our minds," he says. "It was about a 15-foot great white, jumping out of the water."

Not once. Not twice. But three times.
"It was lunging out of the water," he says. "Like, 'I'll be here when you get here next year, bud!'"
Farrier let it go. Ha-ha. Shark hype. Untila swimmer off Solano Beach got pulled violently under water in April. His friends heard screaming and crunching.
They got him to shore. But he bled to death.
EARLY WARNING SIGNS

Farrier's first test lies a half-hour away: feeding time.
If he can keep his energy drinks down, he'll stay nourished over the next 12 hours. If not, he'll dehydrate and run out of gas.
To start this marathon, however, he must actually swim backwards about 100 yards.
As he thwap-thwaps ashore, a pace swimmer and two kayaks slip into the water. They will guide him, feed him and encourage him.

"Hey, it's your day, man," shouts pace swimmer and mentor Marc Lewis, who has swum the Catalina and English channels.
Family and friends cheer. Greg's mom Barbara Farrier-Fox stands to the side: "I won't sleep till he's out of the water," she says.

Farrier climbs ashore, illuminated by the boat's floodlight. Only then does Carol Sing, a monitor for the Catalina Channel Swimming Federation (and 84th person to swim the channel) give the OK and start her stopwatch.
"If I wanted to get eaten by a shark," notes the captain, who used to lead shark dives in these waters, "I'd strip down to a bathing suit, jump in water at midnight, put spotlight on me and splash in the middle of the ocean."
But at this moment that's the least of Farrier's worries. He is watching for three early warning signs that could end his dream before dawn: shoulder pain, sea swells and vomiting.
A sea lion frolics as Farrier sets out for Point Vicente, some 22 miles and 35,000 strokes due east.
A half hour out, his shoulder feels fine but little else does. In the darkness, he can't see the pace swimmer beside him. In the swells, he can't breathe without gulping a mouthful of saltwater. And now, 10 minutes after his first energy-drink? Up it comes.
Alone in the dark, he is left to wonder which Greg Farrier will emerge from the water: the one who quits or the one who fights?

He will need all the support The Bottom Scratcher can muster