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« No. 2/ @. ma) _A : Q --ability to make it? ; ; A: No, not at all. The Senator can swim that five or six times both ways. That may seen unusual, Mr. Dinis, except I a have been with the Senator 30 years swimming and sailing and I don't know if you know the breakwater off Hyannisport, but we 2 m=. used:to swim every day around that, the breakwater, and it is i the chiy thing thé Senator has done since his back injury, be~ .. sides skiing. The real form of exercise for the Senator since the back injury is swimming. And now, Mr. Markhan-- 8/ Q: Were you concerned with the fact of whether or not (the Senator) would arrive safely on the other side? ; A: No, I wasn't. . Let us note that this confidence was not dampened by their knowledge of Mr. Kennedy's (claimed) previous exhaustion, plus his having been clothed at least in a shirt and slacks, which would have offered some impediment, not to mention sneakers that can get quite heavy when filled with water (you can't keep it out, mot eve’. with your hands). "No doubt there are times, depending on varying factors, when that current is dangerously swift for a swimmer, even should he be Senator Kennedy. Whether it was so at approximately 1:30 a.m., which is within a few minutes of the time he alleges he made the swim, is subject to question, however. You see, they have funny water at Martha's Vineyard. It is funny in cther ways than not be- ing able to hold it back with your hands. Now, even a self-respect~ ing Arizonian Frows therc are high and low tides (flood and ebb, if you want to be very nautical) at any place on the ocean. But that isn't enough at Edgartown; at times, at least, they have “double floods" and "double ebbs”". This anomaly contributes to surface currents in that channel, which is considerably deeper than the one at Dike Bridge, being quite different from those, say, six or seven feet below the surface. Since the body is essentially hori- gontal when swimming, the surface currents are the ones the Senator had to worry about. Coincidentally, at the same place where the map of Chappaquiddick Island was inspected they have a book pub- lished by the U.S. Department of Commerce entitled Current Tables, 1969, Atlantic Coast of North America, and it gives all kinds of information about ocean currents, including at Edgartown. It shows that at 0036 hours (1:36 a.m. EDST), when Senator Kennedy should have been in the water, the surface current was slack. (This is despite a high water time of 3:49 a.m., EDST.) No wonder Jared Grant, owner of the ferry and who was on duty the night of July 18th-19th, and who remained at the Edgartown ferry slip until 1:26, said in his testimony: "It was a beautiful night, very calm. The water was like glass."10/ The only way the subsurface current 9/ Remenber Insyector Kennedy's eager response? Anomaly D, p. 27, B/ The Inquest, p. 46. -- 9/ National Ocean Survey Administration, 30 Rockefeiler Flaze, New York City. 10/ The Inguest, p. 83. -39-