Courtesy of WOWSA, Huntington Beach, California. The Santa Barbara Channel Swimming Association reported that an unprecedented crossing of the Santa Barbara Channel from San Miguel Island< to the California shore was completed by Penny Palfrey this week.
The 48-year-old Palfrey, a veteran of 2 English Channel crossings, a Strait of Gibraltar crossing, the 2007 overall winner of the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim, multi-time winner of the 19K Rottnest Channel Swim, oldest female to swim the treacherous
Palfrey started at 6:15 am from San Miguel Island near Nifty Rock and finished at 5:45 pm at Gaviota Point along the Santa Barbara coast, taking approximately 55,161 strokes across the 24 nautical mile channel. Palfrey was accompanied by her husband Chris Palfrey, Dan Boyle (shown on left), observer Emilio Casanueva and crew including skippers Travis Casper and Dean White on the 31-foot Mystico sailboat.Copyright © 2008 by World Open Water Swimming Association
2 comments:
Very interesting to read about Penny's continual updates especially since this is widely frowned upon in marathon swims.
But I do believe some rare swimmers can benefit from this - especially when they are well trained and swimming so strongl!
"Penny swam strong all the way, and kept her sense of humor with Dan and Chris who were continually informing her of distance travelled, stroke count, and water temperature."
While many channels have been attempted frequently over the years, it is fairly recently that many swimmers have attempted the various channels between the Channel islands and the Santa Barbara coast. The local community is very supportive of these efforts and the area offers various challenging courses.
I try to inform the global open water swimming community of short swims, long swims, channel swims, charity swims, swims that educate others, swims that motivate others (e.g., Maarten van der Weijden's Olympic 10K efforts) and unprecedented swims. Penny did another unprecedented swim and I thought it was note-worthy.
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