Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
EMMA MACCHIARINI SWAM
before she walked. On the morning of July 12,
1989, she got up early, dressed in a sparkly swimsuit with a pink bow,
smeared herself with Vaseline, and stepped into the bay. Swimming from
Fort Point under the southern tower of the Golden Gate Bridge to Lime
Point on the opposite shore, she aimed to cross a coastal opening where
currents surge with all the force of an entire ocean on one side and the
state's mightiest rivers on the other. She recalls thinking while in the water
that they'd got the tides all wrong. The swim was much more work, and
took much longer, than she'd imagined.
At one point during her swim, Emma feared she wasn't going to make
it. But she kept lifting her arms and kicking her feet in the freezing grey
water, accompanied by her father swimming beside her and her mother
paddling a boogie board. At another point, a container ship cut across her
path, and the two bar pilots shadowing her in a Zodiac signaled wildly to
both the towering vessel and the slip of a girl to watch out. Eventually she
was able to see the beach ahead, but never seemed to get there. Then she
remembers her father saying, “Stand up, Emma,” as she found her footing
on the Marin County shore.
The headline in the
San Francisco Chronicle
the next day read: “Girl, 8,
Conquers Gate.” The black-and-white photo hid the green algae on her
face. Macchiarini was one of the youngest people ever to swim the mile-
wide channel under the red bridge. She got fan mail, and television cover-
age of her feat.
On that foggy day decades ago, Macchiarini swam across the deepest
part of San Francisco Bay, where the bottom lies 330 feet below sea level.
Girl dives into the bay in the early 1900s. (Courtesy of The Dolphin Club, Shirley
Coleman Collection)
