In January of 2025, I attempted the first crossing from Port Jackson to Mission Bay. This is the story of that attempt.
Coming right
In May 2023, I completed the first ever swim from Great Barrier Island to Auckland. At a distance 99 kilometres, the swim was a significant undertaking, and it took a significant toll on my body. After exiting the water at Campbells Bay, my body was in a state of shock. I was escorted to hospital for testing. It was found that I had elevated levels of creatine kinase, which led to a diagnosis of rhabdomyolysis; a common diagnosis among ultra-endurance athletes. Essentially, my muscles were breaking down and releasing toxic proteins through my bloodstream. I was pumped full of fluid intravenously and brought back to a stable state over the 12 hours that followed. After a week or so, I was more or less back to normal. The general swelling had subsided, my sleep had stabilised, and my body had self-corrected. Unfortunately, there was one misaligned part of my body that decided to hang around longer than invited: an injury to my right wrist, which was sustained during the swim.
Over the 12 months that followed, I was in and out of physical therapy. This included everything from splinting to stretching to sports doctors to ultrasounds and MRIs. It really was the gift that kept giving. I mismanaged it in some senses: when it felt good enough, I would go out and give it a blast in the pool, which would only serve to set it back further. This is more or less the story of the injury management across my sporting life. I may have been able to get away with this approach when I was in my twenties; however, in my mid-thirties I needed to be smarter.
Around May of 2024, 12 months after the initial injury, my wrist was finally good enough to give it a good push. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but I was back to the same strength level that I had been prior to the injury. In July 2024, I was one of a dozen or so swimmers from around the world that was invited to be a part of a circumnavigation attempt of Maui. While I certainly could have pushed myself further, I was incredibly happy to be able to swim a collective 60 kilometres over four days with very little training. I was also pleasingly able to leave with my wrist in a better state than when I arrived. I took this as a sign that I was ready to build toward a new challenge. I had a big, hairy, audacious goal being worked through in the background, but the timing was such that I needed an interim goal of sorts.
One of my favourite parts of ultra-marathon swimming is looking on a map and saying: “I think I could swim that.” The more open, the better. I found a spot on the map at the top of Coromandel Peninsula, a well-known bay called Port Jackson. I decided that would be a great place to start a swim. Mission Bay in Auckland felt like an interesting ending point, and so I marked it accordingly. The distance between these two points came to 60 kilometres which, while a significant distance, I felt was within my wheelhouse given that I had completed a swim approximately 40 kilometres longer than that. It would also be the first time, based on my research, that this route had been attempted. As an independent swim, this meant building an understanding of the tidal flows, charting the course, mapping the risks and hazards, detailing a plan, and bringing together a suitable crew. These elements added additional load on top of the physical preparedness required for an expedition of this nature, but it was all part of what made it an adventure.
The original route
I put the idea to Sarah, my wife, and achieved consent. It was on.
The build begins
At this stage, I was seasoned enough to know how to piece together a training build based on the target distance. There was, however, an additional factor to consider with this training build that had not been a consideration previously: the small matter of having a daughter. Georgiana had been born about one year earlier and, while we were out of the trenches of the first six or so months, she was certainly still a handful and demanded my attention and presence. To put it this way ignores that I enjoy spending time with her. The requisite training would necessitate a heavy sacrifice. I had become accustomed to sacrifices in going through this cycle many times before. This time, though, the nature of the sacrifice cut deeper.
It also meant a certain level of flexibility in my training. As parents will know, children of this age are prone to illness; particularly those that attend daycare. Daycare is a petri dish disguised as childcare. Naturally, the bugs that Georgiana caught flowed to me and Sarah. When you’re deep in training, you’re generally also more prone to catching a cold or flu due to heightened levels of exhaustion. The impact was two-fold: firstly, it meant taking time out to rest and recover; secondly, it meant looking after our wee sick family as the bug jumped from host to host.
Parents will also know that children of this age don’t sleep particularly well, healthy or not. It wasn’t unusual to wake multiple times in the night to soothe our daughter back to sleep only to still to wake for training at 5am in the morning. On the rare occasion, after a hard night, the embrace of my bed would get the better of me and so the training session would slide in favour of recovery.
One of many sunrise training swims
Now, there was the complexity of having a kid, but this wasn’t all. Work was incredibly busy and a considerable suck of both time and energy. Sarah and I had also decided to sell our house and buy another. Allostatic load was high, to say the least. A typical day during the Christmas holidays, which weren’t much of a holiday after all, involved a 4-hour swim in the morning, family time thereafter, and the afternoon spent readying the house with landscaping, painting, or all other manner of jobs that are necessary to make a house market-ready, only to do it all again the next day. I came to learn that endurance is not simply the time spent undertaking training with specificity. Any mental or physical load can be counted as endurance training.
During the taper that followed the training peak, I was holding some of the fastest times that I ever had. I didn’t hold to the training plan with the same rigidity that I had previously but clearly something was working. I felt fit and ready. Sure, my body had its kinks, but I was prepared to move forward.
The adventure begins
The window for the swim attempt was pegged on the neap tide that fell from the 22nd of January to the 28th of January. In approaching our window, it became apparent about four days out from the window opening that the wind forecasts were converging to allow an attempt on the first day of the window, Wednesday 22nd of January. I tentatively alerted the crew to prepare for a start time in the morning, commencing at 9am shortly after the low tide. As forecasts do, they shifted, with inclement wind now forecast for the morning and settling off shortly after midday. After spending an hour speaking with the skippers and various members of the crew on the Monday evening, we made a call to instead start at 8pm on Wednesday. We would still leave on the low tide, but it would be an evening start. There was forecast to be enough of a window through the hours that followed, with the wind expected to come up from 3pm the following day. With an estimated swim duration of 20 hours, it would be a tight opening but sufficient.
The next day, the day prior to the swim commencing, I drove to Colville with my dad, Gordon. We spent the night at a rental on a farmstead. Our view was of sheep in the foreground and the rolling hills of the Coromandel in the background. It was classically kiwi. One of my fears with any swim attempt like this is that obtaining sleep the night before can be hazardous at the best of times. Fortunately, I slept incredibly well and banked every minute that I could, knowing that the night to come would be sleepless.
Dad and I left Colville to head to Port Jackson where we would meet with the rest of the crew, who were travelling in two boats from Okahu Bay in Auckland to Port Jackson. The drive was beautiful. We were treated to an ocean view for most of the drive and it was glorious. Seabirds played around the coast. Conditions looked excellent.
The rolling hills and sparkling waters of the Coromandel coastline
We arrived at Port Jackson late afternoon. After a bite to eat and general chit-chat with the crew, it came to the business end of the day. I suited up and my layer of sun-protection in the form of a zinc oxide blend was generously applied. The moments prior to undertaking a challenge of this nature are strange. You have a knowing that you are about to put yourself through deep discomfort but, until you are in the water taking your first stroke, it’s all an abstraction of a future that is yet to be realised. The first stroke cements that abstraction and pulls it into reality. The whistle sounded and I was off.
The water was a very comfortable temperature. Conditions were dead calm. I glided through the water and felt effortless as I did so. The taper had clearly been effective in adequately resting my body. The first few hours of the swim were amazing. Darkness started to fall an hour or so into the swim, with a moody sunset framed by the clouds above. With the full curtain of darkness came the activation of bright blue bioluminescence thick in the water around me, sparking up my hands and arms with each stroke that I took. I was in my element, figuratively and literally.
The blue splash of bioluminescence contrasting with the green glow of glowsticks
But then, the wheels started to fall off. First it was the gut distress, causing dry retching with no satisfaction. Then my old friend, the injury to my right wrist, started to threaten a return. One moment, I was ecstatic, filled with excitement for what I was undertaking. The next, I was cast to the bottom of a pit. It was an emotional rollercoaster and then some. Soon, the variability of the ups and downs transformed into a static state of mental hardship. I fought against it using the tools that I’ve developed over many years. I had experienced similar gut distress in the record-breaking swim from Great Barrier Island and overcome it. A mantra came into my head: “I will make it to Mission Bay, I will make it to Mission Bay, I will make it to Mission Bay.” Over and over, I repeated that mantra, as if through repetition it would make it so. The crew did what they could to help. Carbohydrate drinks were exchanged for pure water. Ginger beer was brought out to settle the gut distress.
Eventually, that despairing voice entered my mind, the one that cuts straight through to your soul and questions your intentions. “Why are you doing this?” As this question was asked of me, my answer fell wanting. I wasn’t prepared to break my body over this swim. This wasn’t a hill that I was prepared to die on. I couldn’t find a good enough reason to pull myself out of the mental and physical hole that I found myself in. So, I didn’t. I grabbed the side of the rigid inflatable boat alongside me, and, with that, the swim was over. At 1:50am after only 6 hours and 20 minutes of swimming, the swim had been abandoned. After 14 years of open-water swimming and almost 10 years of marathon swimming, this was my first official DNF.
Still covered in zinc oxide, I was draped in towels and delicately put into one of the seats on the boat. In the calm stillness of the Hauraki Gulf, we made our way back to Okahu Bay.
A lesson learnt
I had plenty of time to think on that boat ride home, and I’ve had plenty of time to think since. I had been in significantly more challenging situations mentally and physically and pushed through. What was different this time? Every question pointed me back to the reason for undertaking this mission in the first place. My intentions were pure, but they were insufficient. I didn’t have the conviction to carry on when it mattered. I often talk with other swimmers about having a strong why. This is what happens when you have a middle of the road why.
I know now that I need to have a reason that is bigger than me if I’m to undertake a similar or larger challenge in future. Personal growth and the thrill of an adventure are inadequate drivers. These may have been sufficient once upon a time, but they don’t have the same bite that they once did. I’m willing to break my body, but it has to be in the name of a cause that I’m truly passionate about while meaningfully moving the needle.
There may be a sting following this failure, but the lesson will last a long time I sense.
As always, I must end with gratitude for the support crew who selflessly supported this mission and made it possible: Ivan Polyntcev, Marcel Loubser, Bill Connor, Andy Tuke, Les Gorvett, Chris Kidd, Gordon Ridler. Thank you, legends all.