January 2011 came with a wet start for much of Queensland and parts of the southern states of Australia. Images of the Brisbane floods and the devastating flash flooding which occurred in many areas were being flashed on news broadcasts around the world with many, many people left homeless.
Before the big clean-up began we in North Queensland were also watching the skies as a huge weather system was building in the Coral Sea. Cyclone Yasi was more than huge it was massive! A system 5 cyclone which covered most of the North Queensland coast came bearing down on us in late January.
Much of Townsville was evacuated and many locals were left looking for places to shelter from the cyclone and its predicted storm surge. Some people who were initially evacuated were evacuated for a second time with a 6ft storm surge forecast to go through my sons new rental home and the homes of many Townsville residents.
Chris and I live out of town a little on elevated ground, we opened our home to family and colleagues with 11 people, 7 dogs and 9 cars at our place sheltering from the impending storm.
Townsville was lucky, we received the equivalent of a category 3 blow and the storm surge didn’t arrive as predicted. Our family and friends were able to return to their homes the following afternoon. Though we were not left unscathed with many trees down, the shed roof broken, fences down, shade cloth torn and we were without power for five days. Though we fared far better than our northern neighbours who felt the brunt of cyclone Yasi in the Cardwell and Mission Beach areas.
February 2011 was a pretty quiet month for us with the clean up in the aftermath of Yasi and heavy training underway and much excitement in the lead up to our Hawaii and Cayman Island swims.
March was a fun time with the latter half spent in Hawaii. We had a wonderful stay at the Waikiki Parc Hotel where during the following two weeks I swam three channels and Chris swam two. The first was Alalakiki which Chris and I swam together; the next was my Molokai Channel swim where we were evacuated from our hotel beds shortly after retiring for the evening and spent the night at the Molokai High School while all Hawaiian Islands were on tsunami alert after the dreadful earthquake in Japan. And the third Chris and I swam along with our friend Forrest Nelson from Kauai to Niihau. One of the highlights of this trip was meeting new friends from California fellow swimmers Barbara Held and Kevin Anderson who were escaping from their winter to enjoy some warmer water training.
April and May was spent at home with lots and lots of preparation for my ‘Bridging the Cayman Islands swim’ with big miles of swimming training, and many hours on the internet corresponding with the Cayman Islands, the media and my support crew.
During May Chris swam a couple of local ‘firsts’ including the 14 kilometre stretch between Saunders Beach to Rattlesnake Island and 17.5 kilometres from Orpheus Island to Saunders Beach.
June 2011 was probably one of the biggest WOW months of my life.
Early June we flew to the Cayman Islands and were greeted by Mr Flowers, his family and local politicians. There was a large “Welcome Penny” sign erected at the airport and plenty of media on hand to capture the moment.
My personal story about this 68 mile/108 kilometre swim between Little and Grand Cayman Island which took me 40 hours and 41 minutes to swim is still largely untold, I haven’t properly written about my experiences on this adventure yet.
Immediately after my swim I was completely overwhelmed by the whole experience, the hospitality, the swim, the amazing team who supported me, the fabulous people of the Cayman Islands, my experiences during the swim, pushing my body beyond anything I could have ever imagined and then the days following my swim.
There are so many experiences and emotions I don’t think a simple blog could ever do it justice. It was truly incredible physically, mentally and emotionally in many, many ways. Perhaps that’s one for my book someday.
July saw Chris and I head back to Townsville where it was back to training and Chris’ busiest time at work for all of July and August.
One of the highlights for me was being special guest and invited to ride in the leading truck of the V8 convoy through the streets of Townsville. It was really good fun sitting up there in a huge semi-trailer and being allowed to toot the horn as much as I wanted to, indeed as much as I possibly could!
We also took part in the annual Magnetic Island to Townsville swim a distance of 8 kilometres clocking up our 18th and 21st crossings for Chris and I respectively.
September came with the excitement of a trip to Japan, a booking which we’d made over twelve months before for us both to attempt to swim the Tsugaru Strait.
I had the opportunity to blog extensively on this trip and my diary of our trip to Japan can be found on the ‘swims’ page of this website.
All in all we had a wonderful trip with many new experiences in a land which is very different to the lifestyle and cultures we’re accustomed to here in Australia.
The Tsugaru Strait turned out to be far more challenging than Chris and I had anticipated. We expected the water would be cold but it was not, which was a nice surprise. However swimming with two typhoons in the general area was not such a welcome surprise, which led to unexpected flows in the currents and for me what I’d hoped would be a 12 hour double crossing turned out to be a 14 ½ hour single crossing, with Chris abandoning his swim after around 7 hours having swum on the spot for many of them.
2011 certainly turned out to be the year of the weather for us, with Cyclone Yasi at home, the tsunami in Hawaii and typhoons in Japan.
October and November was back to the grindstone for me, though I had my mind on returning to Hawaii for a second crossing of the Molokai Channel.
With the unwavering support of my dear friend Jeff Kozlovich who put a local support team together for my swim, I was back in Hawaii at the end of November and swam for another 12 hours and 7 minutes in particularly lumpy conditions between the islands of Molokai and Oahu.
This trip turned out to be great fun, where I made some fabulous new friends, which to me is what it’s all about.
Meanwhile Chris enjoyed two more local swims this time in the Whitsunday Islands with his friend Christie Leet where in October they swim 15.2 kilometres from South Molle Island to Airlie Beach and a fortnight later swam 21 kilometres from Hamilton Island to Shute Harbour.
Finally I was nominated as one of 12 women in the World Open Water Swimming Associations, Open Water Swimmer of the Year Awards.
With the winner decided with the highest number of votes, I was not only delighted to receive second place, but humbled and grateful for the wonderful support and fantastic sportsmanship displayed towards me by my peers.
Chris and I thank all those who’ve supported us during 2011, in particular the many people who’ve given up their time to assist us with our swims.
We’ve enjoyed a challenging and successful year of open water swimming clocking up a total of 13 crossings between us, as well as our swims between Magnetic Island and Townsville.
We look forward to sharing more open water swimming adventures with you in 2012!
