Marathon swimmer Penny Palfrey is spending a lot of time in the water this week as she tries to break a world record by swimming between the two Sister Islands and then onto Grand Cayman.
On Monday she set off to break her first record here by swimming from Cayman Brac to Little Cayman in under one hour and 53 minutes, a time set by Lexie Kelly and Steven Munatones only two months ago.
Next up is the ultimate challenge – a 68-mile swim from Little Cayman to Grand Cayman on Thursday. The longest solo unassisted ocean swim currently is 63 miles – a record held by three people.
Weather and sea conditions were a concern on Monday’s swim, with wave heights seas forecast to be four to six feet high, but practice swims in choppy water over the weekend following Palfrey’s Friday arrival showed she was not overly fazed by Cayman’s “rough” seas.
“It was completely calm compared to what we’re used to,” said her husband Chris on Saturday.
Speaking at the Cayman Islands International Airport shortly after touching down from a 36-hour journey from her home in Townsville, Queensland, Australia, Palfrey said she was looking forward to the swims, which she admitted would be challenging.
Thursday’s attempt will be the longest time she has spent in the water. Her previous longest non-stop sea attempt was 17 hours between two Hawaiian islands last year. That swim had to be cut short because she was badly stung by Portuguese Man O’War jellyfish.
“I’ve never gone this far before. Hopefully, I can do it,” she said.
She will begin Thursday’s swim from West End in Little Cayman and she plans to land, sometime on Friday afternoon, between the Morritt’s and The Reef resorts in East End, where a welcoming party of the swim’s organiser Frank Flowers, government officials, school children and anyone else who wants to cheer her arrival, will be waiting.
Reports on her progress will be made live on Radio Cayman and via Twitter and Facebook updates and she can be tracked on Google maps via a GPS tracking system on board one of the support boats that will update every 10 minutes. A helicopter will also help keep track of where she is.
Palfrey, 48, who was born in Scarborough, England, started swimming at age 9 and represented Britain in middle distance pool swimming as a teenager. She moved to Australia when she was 19.
After a break from swimming to raise her three children, she returned to the water after 12 years when she entered a short river swim and discovered she was as competitive as ever. She’s been swimming ever since, breaking records around the world.
She has swum the English Channel twice, once in nine hours, 17 seconds and the second time in nine hours, six seconds.
For her Bridging the Cayman Islands swim from Little Cayman to Grand Cayman, she said dealing with the sun would be challenging and she’ll apply layer after layer of sunblock before getting in the water, and then will put on more whilst in the water.
“I’m not allowed to actually touch the boat or get out of the water, so I’ll have to reapply sunscreen while treading water,” she said. “You’re supposed to be put in on dry skin before getting wet, so whether it’ll stay on or not is going to be a factor.”
She will have sunscreen in a ziplock bag that she will apply in the water by turning the bag inside out and rubbing it on her face, hands and feet. The rest of her body will be covered in a full-length swim suit.
She will also be wearing lanolin and Vaseline on her skin to keep her warm while in the water and to avoid chafing.
Palfrey will swim through two nights, leaving Little Cayman in the early hours of Thursday morning, swimming through dawn and all day Thursday, through sun-up and morning the next day and getting to East End on Friday afternoon.
While she has to worry about the heat and the sun beating down during the day, at night it’s the opposite as she swims through cold and darkness.
“It will get cool when the sun goes down… I’ll be looking into the inky, inky water all night long.”
Steven Munatones, an open water swimming champion from the US who is one of the support crew, said: “At night, it will be very dark out there. When you are swimming at night, you look down and it’s pitch black and you look up and it’s also pitch black.”
She will be accompanied by at least three escort boats, organised by Rod McDowall, operations manager of Red Sail Sports, and there will be kayakers in the water near her throughout her swim.
Frank Flowers said he was inviting members of the public to welcome Palfrey back to shore in East End Friday. “Everyone’s welcome,” he said.
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