OPEN WATER HEROES GREAT
WHEN YOU’VE BEEN SWIMMING FOR MORE THAN 30 HOURS, NO ONE KNOWS WHAT TO EXPECT
20
Australian grandmother Penny Palfrey
swam into the record books last month, with a 67-mile marathon swim across the Caribbean. She relives the troubled journey and tells Sarah Warwick where she gets her inspiration
There are two ways I can tell that Penny Palfrey is not a typical grandmother. Firstly, the woman smiling at me from her Australian living room through the power of Skype looks about 30. She’s young for a grandmother (at 49) and gorgeous for a woman of any age, with long blonde hair and a dimpled, wide- beam smile. Secondly, she’s in the middle of telling me how she just got back from swimming a whopping 108km (67mi) without stopping – a swim which saw her bat le with jellyfi sh, massive waves, strong currents and sharks.
Her swim from Cayman Brac to Lit le Cayman and then on to Grand Cayman, known as the Bridging the Cayman Islands swim, was the longest solo unassisted sea swim of all time. But from the way she talks about it, in her soſt ly spoken, nonchalant way, you’d think it was just a couple of lengths – no big deal.
“Being in the Caribbean, there were a number of obstacles – but I don’t really worry about the weather or the marine life or sharks or anything, it’s all part of what we do, and I’m prepared.” This is a dramatic understatement of the obstacles she faced over the 40-hour marathon. At one point during the swim a shark even bumped her foot, but while any other person would panic, Palfrey kept her cool. “I got bumped on the legs and assumed it was a shark,” she recalls. “I said to the guys on the boat, ‘Guys, a shark just bumped my foot. Keep it tight and check the shark shields.’ I didn’t even stop. Just liſt ed my head to tell them, then moved in closer to the boat and kept on swimming.”
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