Night Train to the Devil’s Teeth

Just offshore the notoriously sharky Farallon Islands, a cluster of gnarled sea stacks 30 miles west of San Francisco, a lone buoy tossed and rang in the empty night. It was shortly before midnight on August 7, 2015, and Kim Chambers, her body smeared with lanolin and wearing only a one-piece bathing suit, goggles, and a swim cap, slipped from the deck of a boat into the frigid water. She paused briefly as the cold tore the breath from her lungs and then made for the clanging buoy. Chambers gave it a gentle pat to mark her beginning, then turned and began swimming toward the Golden Gate Bridge.

The swim between the Farallones and mainland California sits on the very top shelf of the library of endurance feats called marathon swims. When Chambers began stroking toward shore, no women and only four men had completed the swim. For the sake of comparison, consider the twenty-one-mile English Channel, long considered the granddaddy of marathon swims. It was first conquered