A series of long swims and longer walks home

[I]Editor’s Note: On June 9, 2008, James Bell celebrated his 70th birthday swimming the five-mile channel between Saipan and Tinian. It was a feat he last achieved in July 1981, when he marked his retirement from the U.S. Navy by swimming alone from Saipan to Tinian. His next goal is to cross the Torres Strait from Papua New Guinea to the Australian mainland. To practice for this arduous journey, Bell will be swimming along the coastline of Saipan, with the goal of eventually circling the entire island. Here, he will be sharing his experience with Saipan Tribune readers as he attempts the feat.[/I] [B][I]Second part of a series[/I][/B]

The rainy season is here and it is a good time in the annual cycle for ocean swimming. The break down in the northeast trade winds is keeping waves fairly low on the north, east and south shores and the reefs on the western side of Saipan are not experiencing swell from storms that move into the Pacific Ocean from mainland Asia in the winter and spring. Tropical storms and typhoons usually come a little later in the summer and fall.

Completion of the second segment of my swim took me to the vicinity of one of Saipan’s power plants, a rather unscenic stretch of shoreline. The next segment was swum on July 12th, a 4.6-mile swim inside the reef which took 5 hours 29 minutes. Progress was sometimes slow in patches of branching coral, but that allowed more time to enjoy the rainbow colored fish. There were no boats to worry about and a shoreline of sand and low rocks made for an easy exit if I felt the need to get out of the water. As I proceeded northward in the lagoon it was steadily narrowing as the barrier reef gradually converged on the shoreline. The distance from shore to reef was two miles at the start of the swim, but in the late afternoon, I ran out of lagoon as the reef came close enough to a rocky point to fill the space with sharp corals and sea urchins in water too shallow for swimming. The shoreline was now rocky cliffs with only a few small patches of beach so I headed back to Paupau Beach where exit from the water would be on sand in close proximity to a road for the long walk home.

On the way to Paupau Beach, I encountered a sea creature that brought back a lot of memories, an Acanthaster planci (crown of thorns starfish). This creature is not the pretty blue starfish you see in the lagoon; it is a coral-eating monster up to 20 inches across with 16 to 18 spine-covered arms. The poisonous spines are so sharp they easily penetrate gloves and skin. This was the only one I had encountered since my return to the tropics and a very low population density is typical under normal conditions. In the mid-’60s something happened to create a population explosion in the acanthaster and they ravaged the Great Barrier Reef of Australia and reefs throughout the tropical Pacific. I became acquainted with the problem on Guam through contact with Dr Richard Chesher, a marine biologist at the University of Guam. Dr. Chesher set up a “killer team” of divers armed with formalin-filled hot water bottles with heavy-duty homemade hypodermics attached with a rubber tube. I was one of the “killers” and spent many Saturdays with the team attempting to hold back the tide of acanthasters by injecting them with formalin ((liquid formaldehyde). The acanthaster invasion was an awesome sight. The starfish moved through the coral in steadily advancing fronts. Approaching the devastation from the rear, one first encountered the acres of dead coral shrouded with gray algae, then the zone of bleached white recently killed coral and finally the war zone. The coral was so infested with acanthaster that there were coral formations completely covered with intertwined spiny arms. It was a very one-sided war. One of the few natural enemies of the starfish is the beautiful triton’s trumpet shell prized by shell collectors. If all the triton’s trumpets left in the Pacific had been arrayed against this army, they probably could not have stopped it. The starfish, unlike the killer team, were unaffected by weather and conflicting schedules and marched inexorably on. When I returned to Guam for my final tour in the Navy, I swam the 120-mile shoreline in 1980 and observed only one pocket of acanthasters. The reefs were slowly recovering. There is still debate on whether this was a natural cycle or the result of an imbalance caused by the activities of man. I hope never to see it again.

I finished the day with a 9 1/2 mile walk home. That combined with my morning walk to the power plant gave a total of 15 1/2 walking miles for the day.

For my fourth segment, I decided to swim the barrier reef from Wing Beach back to Managaha Island on July 19th. This really was not necessary, but I wanted to cover all the reef on Saipan, not just the shoreline. A friend, Daniel Villegas, drove me to the beach and saw me off on what would prove to be a long day, taking 7 hours 58 minutes to cover 6.2 miles. I saw four sharks at various points along the reef, the first sharks I have seen since I swam the Tinian Channel in 1981. Crossing the reef to get to Managaha Island was another adventure. It was a reef filled with sharp coral and sea urchins, much like the reef that ended my swim on July 12th. The water was not deep enough for swimming, so I had no choice but to stand in bare feet. On this swim, for the first time, I had towed a high top plastic pan in a garbage bag surrounded by a laundry bag for the purpose of bringing along shoes for the walk home. I had attached to it a yellow balloon to make myself more visible to boats. Low waves were knocking me off balance, I did not want try to unpack my walking shoes on the reef to protect my feet, so I improvised. Taking care not to sit on the balloon, I seated myself in the pan and moved it forward after gingerly setting my hands and feet in places where there was no sharp coral or urchins. It was a wide reef and this process had to be repeated for an hour to reach the deeper water of the lagoon. Fortunately, no one was there to take pictures. Had this picture appeared in the Saipan Tribune, I probably would have packed my bags and gone home. It was a 25-minute swim to the beach at Managaha Island with my arrival occurring an hour and a half after the departure of the last ferry for Saipan. Fortunately, there were young people who had come to the island in their own boats to take pictures of the sunset. The towering clouds of the evening during the rainy season often make postcard sunsets. I rode back to Saipan in a high-powered 18-ft boat. As we flew across the harbor, I decided that this is the way to go. The only advantage to travel by pan is that it is cheap and quiet. Scott and Dee McClarin gave me a ride home so I didn’t need my soggy shoes, but the pan I carried them in had saved the day.

My fifth segment was swum on Saturday, July 26, a 51/2-mile, 7-hour swim. I covered the north end of the island from Wing Beach to Bird Island. Harry Blalock, a radio station manager, and Douglas Johnson, a visitor from Tokyo, used SCUBA gear to take underwater pictures as I swam through the channel which separates the end of the barrier reef from a rocky point. This swim began a very different environment. Without a barrier reef, the waves crash against an unprotected shoreline. Gone was the lagoon and sandy beaches, replaced with rocky platforms elevated several feet above the sea surface and ending in cliffs. Larger waves topped the platform and water cascaded from the dropoff between waves. Beneath the surface a shelf of varying depth extended seaward several hundred feet. In 5 1/2 miles, I saw only one place where there was a break in the rampart that seemed like a possibility for exiting the water. In this part of the Pacific Ocean, there is a broad current moving from east to west. The speed of this current increases dramatically when it is funneled between islands as is the case in the channel between Saipan and the island of Tinian that lies three miles to the south. The distance from Saipan to Farallon de Medinilla, the next island to the north, is 45 nautical miles so I expected no funneling effect, but I did expect to find a current sweeping around Sabaneta Point, the northernmost point on Saipan. When a current rounds a point, it has been my experience that the current does not usually hug the shoreline, but tends to parallel the shoreline some distance seaward. In the space between the current and the shore, a circulation sometimes develops with a countercurrent running back up the shoreline. I was expecting this and began to enjoy the boost of a following current not long after leaving the channel at Wing Beach. The countercurrent was fairly strong and, although I appreciated it, I knew payback time would come at Sabaneta Point. The expected reversal of current appeared abruptly and swept me off the shelf into deeper water. A current speeds up as it crosses a shelf so I was able to make headway against it once I was in deep water. Going was slow with a swimming time of 80 minutes required to cover the 8 tenths of a mile to the Banzai Cliffs.

There is a sadness about the Banzai Cliffs going back to the early summer of 1944. The Japanese moved into Saipan under a League of Nations mandate after World War I and developed a sugar cane and fishing industry. Thousands of Japanese civilians made Saipan their home and they remained with the outbreak of World War II. When the United States invaded Saipan, the tide soon turned against the Japanese forces, but they fought on almost to the last man, inflicting terrible losses on the American forces. The civilians retreated to the north in advance of our forces with hundreds jumping a thousand feet to their deaths from the Suicide Cliffs. Others retreated until they stood looking down at the sea from nameless cliffs that would later be called the “Banzai Cliffs”. Then they began leaping 100 feet into the sea. Some leaped alone, others leaped as families, the youngest first, the elders last. American ships attempting to save the few who survived the plunge were blocked by the accumulation of bodies in the sea.

The bottom of the Banzai Cliffs is a chaotic place. As the cliffs are undercut by waves, huge sections fall into the sea. One large piece extends above the sea surface, but most of the pieces have piled up at various levels on the steep slope into the depths. The sea has eroded large caverns in the rocks underlying the cliffs that amplify the sound of the roar of the waves and the hissing and spraying of blowholes. Forty years ago, I looked down at this scene from the top of the cliffs. Somehow, looking down at the age of 30 was better than looking up at the age of 70.

Due to the current at Sabaneta Point, I was running an hour late at the cliffs and needed to make up for lost time. I quit making hourly stops to check my progress and swam for four hours stopping for nothing. Each breath I took, I looked at waves crashing against the rock platform at the shoreline. It was like watching a four-hour time-lapse movie played at the speed at which it was filmed.

Finally, the welcome sight of Bird Island Bay came into my field of view. I had not made up much time and decided to chance going across the reef rather than continuing to the channel on the south side of Bird Island. It turned out to be a swimmer-friendly reef with little coral and no sea urchins. As I approached the beach, a rain squall moved in from the east and my welcoming party, Daniel Villegas and two of his friends, ran to a nearby cave for cover. I was pelted by rain and the shower felt good after a seven-hour soak in warm salt water. This swim marked a change in procedure, with people at the beginning and end of my swim who knew my estimated time en route. The balloon attached to my belt was seen by my welcoming party well before I crossed the reef, giving me hope that it would increase my visibility from passing boats. Surprisingly, I encountered no boats at all in my swim. I guess the balloon was serving its purpose.

My next swim will carry me from Bird Island four miles down the east side of the island to Jeffries Beach. I will keep you posted.

[B][I]To be continued.[/I][/B]