Swim is one in a hundred

Alcatraz has a special place in people's hearts, although the place varies according to the experience.

Al Capone, for example, had the take of a former inmate when it was a jail, from 1934 to 1963: "Alcatraz don't do no good for nobody," Capone reportedly said.

Gary Emich, a former industrial relations professional with the US Postal Service, disagrees. He has a lot to thank Alcatraz for, much of which revolves around the reason why Alcatraz was such a feared prison in the Capone days.

Emich describes himself as "an aquapreneur", running private swims for people who want to swim from Alcatraz into San Francisco. He also organises internal swims for his club, the South End Rowing Club, which occupies an old boatshed on the shores of Aquatic Cove, a sheltered recreational area opposite Alcatraz.

Some of Emich's clients are very interesting. Recently, Emich tweeted: "Who needs 72 virgins? I led 4 au naturel female clients on an Alcatraz open water swim yesterday - the bum glare was blinding."

People such as Capone might have appreciated Emich's service.

In 29 years as a jail, not one escape attempt is known to have succeeded. Only one of 14 escape attempts is known to have resulted in a successful swim, although the escapee was recaptured.

The result of the penultimate escape attempt from Alcatraz, by three inmates in 1962, is the only one in which the escapees were never found. It was dramatised in the Clint Eastwood movie, Escape from Alcatraz.

Alcatraz is, perhaps, the most enigmatic tourist site in the United States, thought escape-proof as a prison because no-one could swim to the mainland, even if they could get out of the high-security prison buildings.

Alcatraz sits in the middle of San Francisco Bay. (AAP Image)

Why? Water temperature, distance and currents, and perhaps sharks.

Even in summer, the water temperature of San Francisco Bay gets to around only 17-18 degrees Celsius, which is cool for most, cold for some.

The currents run past the island at a terrifying pace. San Francisco Bay is an enormous area of water which runs in and out through the relatively narrow opening under the Golden Gate Bridge. Alcatraz sits at the point where the bay starts to narrow, so the current picks up as the water squeezes through the opening.

Sharks? The surrounding ocean is notorious for Great Whites, while the brackish water in the Bay estuary would suggest to Australians a haven for bull sharks, which rank up there with Great Whites in the ferocity stakes.

Regulars say there are "no nasty sharks in San Francisco Bay", but a recent report by marine biologists in Northern California, which followed tagged Great Whites, found they do, in fact, venture into the bay.

Gary Emich is here to tell you, however, that "the Strait of Capone", between Alcatraz and the city, is eminently swimmable.

Emich has done the swim over 600 times. In a tweet on January 2, he wrote: "9 Alcatraz swims in 10 days - my body & shoulders are revolting! Total of 97 in 2009 & that includes my 12 weeks out of the US!"

It is true that swims at certain times of the day are difficult and dangerous. This is when the tide is running. As a local authority on Alcatraz swims, Emich times his for when the tide is on the turn, the water relatively still.

The window isn't open long, however. Emich's skill is in reading the currents, and advising clients how to adjust their heading to hit their target, not to mention watching the shipping movements.

As a national park, it's illegal to land on Alcatraz unofficially, so swimmers must travel by boat to the island, then jump in.

Our swim was on Labor Day, the Monday public holiday that marks the end of the summer holidays. We tagged onto a celebration, the first anniversary of a San Francisco couple who invited a bunch of friends to join them.

Our swim started just after dawn. We piled into a small cruise boat, MV Captain Joe, arriving off the island ready to jump at 7.45am.

"Head for the white ship, the Eureka," Emich told us in the briefing beforehand.

"Then, as you get in, head for the twin apartment towers behind the cove."

That should, he reckoned, see you bobbing about in the bay just outside the entrance to Aquatic Cove.

"Then you can just float on in," Emich told us.

Emich reckoned that, by the time we jump, the runout tide will be almost done. By the time we get near to the cove, he estimated, there should be very little current at all to whisk us along.

The indolent tide is complemented by welcoming conditions: it's a gloriously clear morning, warm, just a breath of breeze, not enough to disturb the surface of the bay, which is glassy smooth.

We are apprehensive as we teeter on the rail of the Captain Joe, one foot over the railing on the gunwale, the other inside the railing.

"The moment of truth", we mumble. For while we swam in the cove the day before, we could ease ourselves into the water. Not so when you dive in dry and warm from the boat.

In we go, and we're surprised that it's not too bad, certainly not as shocking as we'd feared. We swim "nude" - no wetsuit. We carry our wettie built in.

The peloton is accompanied across the Strait of Capone by rubber duckies from the South End Rowing Club, and several rowers in timber skiffs, highly varnished and meticulously cared for. The skiffs are modelled on Cornish boats. The South Enders are very proud of them. They are beautiful craft.

Emich wants the peloton together, but the mob spreads from the start. The skiffs and the ducks dart about the bay, hunting and gathering, shepherding stragglers and off-coursers.

Everyone strikes out in their own interpretation of Emich's landmarks. Very quickly, the mob is spread across a couple of hundred metres of bay, and a few hundred metres along the course. Within a few dozen strokes, we are alone.

By the time we reckoned we'd swum half a kilometre, we rolled onto our backs to look back at the island, only to find it looming over us still, as if we'd never left it. It was dispiriting. We'd been watching the distant city getting "closer", only to feel that we were as close to the island as we were at the start.

Another "half a kilometre"... Rolled over again, and still we seemed not to have moved. This time, as we bobbed around, we found Emich bobbing up next to us. So we chatted a bit, took photos of each other, such as smiling into the sunrise with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.

Then we set off again, this time pretty much stroke for stroke. But within another hundred metres, Emich was nowhere to be seen. We stopped, and we looked around, like one of those clowns in a sideshow with its mouth open waiting for you to insert the ping pong ball. There he is, over to the south-east, with a skiff next to him, about 100 metres ahead of us.

We altered our bearing a little, more towards the twin apartment towers. The wash of a fishing boat going past bumped us around a little, just enough to remind us we were in a working harbour.

Still no seal lions, though. San Francisco Bay abounds in sea lions. You may not see them, but you certainly hear the bark - like a hoarse dog.

On pontoons off Pier 39, the headquarters of the Fishermans Wharf precinct, there are 1,200 sea lions lolling about in the sun posing for tourists' photographs. You smell those lions long before you see them.

We'd had sea lions in the backs of our minds as we struck out across The Strait of Capone, after hearing stories from South Enders about being bitten by them.

Out in the bay, conditions improved as the sun rose: it got warmer, the breeze lifted a little, but the water surface remained smooth. The water was brackish, but it wasn't dirty. You wouldn't want to swallow too much of it, but what you swallowed was not enough to harm you.

You could work on your stroke as you ploughed through the bay: stretch it out, flex the wrist, catch the water, crook that arm, pull it through, evenly, keeping it on the one side of the body, finish off with a flourish. Rotate from the hips; try to keep those feet from crossing. Bend your elbow on recovery...

A bit of wash from time to time, and all of a sudden, there we were, bobbing off the mouth of Aquatic Cove.

"That's one in a hundred," said Emich, as we bobbed. He'd bobbed up from nowhere, again. We thought we were alone sitting there, apart from a clutch of late swimmers heading out through the entrance from the cove on their own constitutionals.

One in a hundred times, you get conditions as good as that, Emich reckoned. And we were the lucky ones. We swam Alcatraz in what turned out to be near perfect conditions.

If you go:

Alcatraz - www.nps.gov/alcatraz

Alcatraz Cruises - www.alcatrazcruises.com/

San Francisco Visitors Guide - www.onlyinsanfrancisco.com/

Alcatraz Swims - Gary Emich - www.lanelinestoshorelines.com/

If you wish to swim in San Francisco Bay, the South End Rowing Club and the adjacent Dolphin Club offer casual memberships on alternating days Tuesday - Saturday ($US6.50 ($A7) at the door). Ring the doorbell for admission.

South End Rowing Club - www.south-end.org/

Dolphin Club - www.dolphinclub.org/

* The writer travelled to the US as a guest of United Airlines.