A Narcissist's Guide to Catalina

Boats anchored near the Catalina Casino on Santa Catalina Island. Photo by David Lee.

You can swim to Catalina Island from the coast of Southern California. If it's been a few years since your last full-body shave down, however, some preparation may be in order before you snap on your cap and dive in, and when I say preparation, I mostly mean swimming, a twelve-month calendar full of endurance swims, timed sprints, and all the colors in between. This isn't an easy commitment. As the demands of work, inclement weather, and/or a genetic predisposition to laziness can derail your best intentions, a bonafide twenty-one-mile motivator may be in order. My nominee: the great white shark, a familiar Pacific Ocean inhabitant more likely to attack a struggling dog-paddler than a speedy, untroubled freestyler. Paste his image to your refrigerator. Watch Jaws. Feel the energy surge commonly known as fear.

Of course, you don't have to go it alone. Employing a kayaking escort to convoy you across the channel makes sense, though this individual will need a few skills to be of any value. Along with a certain amount of boating proficiency, the escort should be trained in basic water safety and have a deep understanding of hypothermia, as the classic terrestrial signs—the inability to walk and terminal burrowing, i.e. the unquenchable desire to tunnel into composting piles and/or homestead under tents of fallen trees—will be less than apparent in the unwooded ocean waters.

Alternatively, if you can get ahold of an outrigger canoe and half a dozen acquaintances with good upper-body strength, you can paddle across the channel, Polynesian style. You would still get wet and hopelessly sore, but the trip would be shorter, relatively speaking, and as part of a team, there might even be opportunity for you to occasionally slack off, to lower your paddle and admire your hands' ability to rapidly blister. A less physical course is to simply buy a ferryboat ticket. It's easy, but far from original. Of the million or so tourists that visit Catalina every year, most shuffle off a ferryboat or cruise ship. But, again, these are only suggestions. No one will stop you if you decide to jump right in and start kicking. That is to say, no one is going to arrest you. It's still a free country in that respect.

I have yet another option for you. It includes more variables, sure, but it would be criminal not to include it on the list. Make a friend who owns a boat, or, better yet, make a friend who is a member of a boat-owning family, ideally the youngest of three brothers, with parents worn out and uninterested in properly monitoring their eighteen-year-old son's activities. A sailboat would suffice, a small keelboat, something in the twenty-two- to twenty-seven-foot range, one that could be equipped with a modest motor. A boat this size is easy to manage and roomy enough to accommodate guests, plenty of gear, and the basic creature comforts—a head, an icebox, and simple cooking facilities. You and your boat-owning friend and another, non-boat-owning friend could go to a mainland harbor the night before your trip and sleep on board for a few hours to wake in the wee, octopus-ink morning and loose the ties and maneuver out of the harbor and beyond the breakwater and adjust the autopilot and revisit sleep while slowly motoring out on the calm, breeze-free ocean, and wake up again hours later with the sun newly risen and there she blows, Avalon Harbor, where you find an available buoy and tie up your boat and jump in the water and climb back on board and remove the inflatable dinghy from its storage space and hook it up to its pump and crack open a Tecate and laugh a giddy, early-morning beer-buzzed laugh because it was so, so much easier than swimming, and who likes to...