Plans Go Swimmingly for Lynne Cox

Lynne Cox, the 30-year-old Los Alamitos woman who swam the Bering Strait to the Soviet Union on Aug. 7, plans to visit the Soviet Embassy in Washington to discuss plans for a possible swim project in that country.

“They phoned me to invite me to the embassy,” Cox said. “They haven’t given me a definite date, but I told them I’d be delighted.”

Cox also said she was excited during the recent summit meetings when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev led off a round of toasts at the state dinner at the White House with a reference to her swim.

Gorbachev said: “Last summer, it took a daring American girl by the name of Lynne Cox a mere two hours to swim the distance separating our two countries. On (Soviet) television, we saw how sincere and cordial the meeting was between the people when she stepped on the Soviet shore. By her courage she showed how close to each other our two peoples live.”

Cox said: “I was excited that he recognized what we were trying to do and what the people who met us were there trying to do--that we are neighbors.”

Cox, escorted by two walrus-skin boats and part way by a Soviet Navy launch, swam the 2.7-mile channel across the international date line from the United States’ Little Diomede Island to the Soviet Union’s Big Diomede in 2 hours 5 minutes. The water temperature most of the way was between 43 and 44 degrees, dropping into the 30s near the end of the swim.

No one else had ever attempted the feat.