Top South African open water swimmer Mark Edge has escaped from Alcatraz.
The former Springbok open water specialist took the plunge from the infamous penitentiary and overcame a fearsome current to make it to mainland San Francisco.
It had been a tough swim to freedom, he said this week, back home in Port Elizabeth. Edge, 59, undertook the Escape-from-Alcatraz swim as part of a trip with his sons Matthew, 21, and Andrew, 18, to visit his sister Jenny Dallas in San Francisco.
Today Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, also known as The Rock, is a public museum. Before it closed as a prison in 1963, however, it held a grimly colourful pantheon of famous criminals including gangster boss “Scarface ” Al Capone and murderer Robert Stroud, the “Birdman of Alcatraz”.
The swim was named after Clint Eastwood’s 1979 movie of the same name which dramatised the real-life escape by prisoners Frank Morris and John and Clarence Anglin.
The trio, who made their dash in an improvised inflatable raft, were never seen again, and there is still conjecture today as to whether they made it to safety, drowned or were devoured by sharks.
Edge chuckled that he had not been troubled unduly by sharks.
“The visibility was very bad so I couldn’t see anything and I tried not to think about them.“But just a few beaches up the coast the authorities had banned swimming because of a shark presence – so they were there.”
His big swim had started on the west side of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay and ended 3.2km away at Aquatic Park, a small boat harbour on the mainland, he explained.
The challenge had been organised for him by Dallas as a birthday present for her brother.
A member of the Alcatraz Open Water Association guided him across on a canoe while the family watched from a boat which sailed along parallel to them.
While the distance was slight compared with South Africa’s 7km Robben Island swim – for which Edge held the record for 20 years – the conditions made it extremely challenging.
There was a rough heavy swell and the temperature was just 13°C.
“But the biggest two challenges were the strong current, which washes from Golden Gate Bridge left to right across the bay, and the small landing zone.
“If you miss this zone then you have to swim back into the current and at the end of a hard swim that can turn out to be impossible.”
In order to end up at the right spot he launched on an up-current trajectory.
“I knew that the harder I swam the straighter I could go, but if I was too slow I would still get washed past the landing zone.
The Alcatraz swimming association hosts a race once a year, but solo crossings and times are not officially timed. Edge’s time of under 40 minutes was nevertheless one of the better times, the association representative said.Edge was born in Musina, a long way from the sea. But then his parents relocated back to Port Elizabeth and enrolled their son at Grey Junior School and, besides excelling on the rugby field, he took to swimming like a duck to water.
Having graduated to Grey High School, he played firstteam rugby from an early age and still holds the record for the most first-team games played by a Grey High pupil.
He went on to play Craven Week rugby in 1976-77 with greats like Danie Gerber. But he was pushing still harder in the pool.
He ended up playing Eastern Province waterpolo for a decade and winning Springbok colours for three aquatic sports – flat water lifesaving, biathlon and surf lifesaving – and touring Switzerland and the US with South African teams.
Edge spent two years participating in the British marathon swimming circuit and in 1981 he won the 15km British open water swimming marathon in Morecambe Bay near Blackpool. Meanwhile, having studied human movement science at the then University of Port Elizabeth and having himself been mentored by top coaches Peter and Brian Elliot and Scotsman Tom Connell, he took up a coaching position with the Port Elizabeth Amateur Swimming Club.
The club is the oldest of its kind in the country and he has been the head coach there now for 25 years.
At the same time during that period he has coached a number of national teams. Last year he was part of the coaching staff on the Springbok team which participated in the world short course championships in Canada.
Edge said Algoa Bay and the Port Elizabeth beachfront were still the best venues for open water swimming globally, in his view.
“Our bay’s beautiful and safe but can also be challenging. It’s good to be home,” he said.