Pailolo Channel

On September 17, 2022, I swam the Pailolo Channel from Namalu Bay, Maui to Puko’o, Moloka’i with my friend, Abby Bergman. Abby and I met just last year, but we became close friends quickly as we shivered together swimming skins through the winter in San Francisco. The dynamic of our friendship is simple; Abby suggests a wild plan, usually swimming related, and I say yes before knowing any of the details. As we got closer to our Maui trip, I wasn’t surprised when my phone vibrated with a text from Abby – “So, I have an idea…”

We swiftly had a plan and a back-up plan. Abby corresponded with a pilot who was available to assist us towards the end of our time on Maui, and a few days before our swim date, it became apparent that the weather would be favorable to attempt the Pailolo Channel. If we were successful, Abby would celebrate finishing the Maui Triangle and I would complete my first ever channel swim.

My alarm rang at 0445, but I had already been lying awake in anticipation of the swim for quite some time. After a final check of our supplies, we drove from our hotel in Ka’anapali to the Mala Boat Ramp in Lahaina, where we were serenaded by an abundance of roosters crowing from every direction in the parking lot. Captain Keith welcomed us to his boat with warm hugs and a friendly smile. As we loaded up the boat, I admired a ray of some kind gently flapping in the water nearby. We discussed the route and safety considerations for the swim and began motoring to the start under the soft light of the early morning.  

A short boat ride later, we arrived at Namalu Bay. We jokingly discussed starting the swim by jumping from one of the nearby cliffs, but ultimately decided that having greasy marathon swimmers climb up a steep cliff face might not be our brightest idea. Our crew chief extraordinaire, Deedee Lundberg, helped us apply sunscreen and a thick layer of Desitin to protect our skin from the strong Hawaiian sun. I already had a bad sunburn on my entire backside, as we had gone surfing the day prior and I spent almost 3 hours in the water before realizing I had forgot to put on sunscreen. As I rubbed Aquaphor around my suit straps, Abby recommended I put SafeSea on my chest and abdomen. “Jellyfish tend to get stuck in your suit, this will help,” she explained, as our Captain told a story of a swimmer having convulsions after swallowing a Portugese man o’ war. Multiple species of jellyfish inhabit the waters surrounding Hawai’i, and I knew going into this swim that I would likely be stung en route to Moloka’i. Jellyfish are so common in Hawai’i that the Waikiki Aquarium maintains a calendar to predict the likelihood of encountering Box Jellyfish, which are known to be found on west and south facing beaches 8 to 10 days after a full moon. Our swim date fell 7 days after the most recent full moon and started on a west facing shore, so our likelihood of encountering Box Jellyfish was… likely.

In addition to the almost guarantee of being stung by jellyfish during this swim, we also had to consider the possibility of encountering sharks. After multiple unprovoked shark attacks on Maui in 2012-2013, a team of researchers at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa tracked 41 Tiger Sharks from 2013-2015 to gain insight on their movement patterns around the island. They learned that tiger sharks favor insular shelve habitats, which extend up to 600 feet from shore and are plentiful around the island of Maui. I wasn’t necessarily worried about being attacked by a shark during the swim, but marathon swim attempts can occasionally be thwarted by the presence of curious sharks. Even still, I was secretly hoping to see one (yet only from a distance).

I am usually a ball of anxiety before a long swim, but this morning felt different, even with all the chatter around jellyfish and sharks. As I ran off the back of the boat and dove into the ~80° water, I was filled with joy and excitement for the adventure ahead. With Abby by my side, I was able to calmly think of this major undertaking as “just another long swim with my good friend.” Abby cautiously entered the water and together we swam towards the Maui shoreline.

Abby and I carefully climbed out of the water and up the slippery rocks until we were on completely dry earth. We posed for a photo, gave each other a fist bump, and Abby said, “let’s do this thing” before we re-entered the water. The official start time of our swim was 0651.

Somehow, I managed to coat the outside of my goggles with Destitin. I negotiated whether I should try to swim until the next feed with minimal visibility, but ultimately decided that I should just deal with this immediately. I picked my head up after about 2 minutes of swimming and asked Deedee to throw a washcloth into the water so I could wipe my goggles. A moment of scrubbing and an “oh shit” from Abby later and all was well. Now that I could see, I was able to admire the various fish swimming below us. The water was calm and pleasant at 78°, and the wind was blowing at 3-5mph. I noticed that my shoulders were feeling a bit fatigued from surfing, though I anticipated that this would improve as I loosened up in the water.

I noticed that the boat wasn’t making forward progress, and Abby and I were getting uncomfortably far from our escort. We stopped and decided to swim back towards the boat to make sure everything was okay. Captain Keith was using a large parachute and a tire to increase drag on the boat so he wouldn’t need to frequently shift in and out of gear to stay with us, and it took a bit of adjusting for us three to settle into a rhythm. Deedee later told me that we were swimming faster than he anticipated and he needed to remove some drag at the beginning of the swim.

Soon afterwards, I noticed a pinprick stinging sensation on my left elbow, and then another on my forehead. The stinging on my arm wasn’t too painful, but the facial sting was intense. This was my first time experiencing jellyfish stings during a marathon swim. It was interesting to feel the searing pain while knowing there was nothing I could do to relieve the sensation. When we reached out first feed, I asked Abby if she was also being stung and she gave me an affirmative nod. Deedee asked for a sting count, and we continued towards Moloka’i.

I continued to be stung as I focused on my swim mantra, “joy, ease, lightness.” I borrowed this from a passage in The Power of Now by Ekhart Tolle. Those three words remind me to stay present in the current moment, whatever the moment may bring. As I expected, the soreness in my shoulders began to dissipate. I was swimming with the boat to my left and Abby to my right and I could clearly see Captain Keith peering attentively at us from a small, open window at the helm. When we got to the second feed, Captain Keith and Deedee showered us with praise for how well we were swimming. Abby was silent, though I did not take her silence to mean anything. I generally begin swims with a burst of excitement that dwindles over time, while Abby takes some time to warm up to the swim, but gets happier as we progress. I silently made a bet with myself that Abby would be somber until our fourth feed and then she would perk up (spoiler alert: I owe myself $5).

A while later, I noticed that I could no longer see the ocean floor. Every so often a jellyfish would pass by, and the water was speckled with small, fluorescent blue particles. Some jellies reminded me of the moon jellyfish I have seen in Aquatic Park, Belvedere Cove, and the Foster City Lagoon. Other jellyfish looked like translucent ribbons dancing in the movement of the water. Once, I saw a jellyfish that I can only describe as looking like a translucent torpedo with thick reddish tentacles. Beyond these intermittent visitors, the water was clear and intensely blue. I could see rays of sunlight penetrating through the surface. A few feeds passed, and the jellyfish stinging thankfully stopped. Abby and I began exchanging words of encouragement during our feeds. We swam. Time passed.

The water became increasingly bumpy. I could feel myself being pushed and pulled in every direction. The Pailolo channel is well known for being windy. Captain Keith would later tell us that it would be impossible to swim this channel the next day due to increasing winds. In Hawaiian, Pailolo means “crazy fisherman.” It is also considered a combination of the words pai (lift) and olo’olo (shifting), which perfectly describes what I was feeling in the water. At times, I could not see Abby when I breathed towards my right as we alternated being in the peaks and valleys of the swells. The boat rocked back and forth, and I worried about Deedee getting seasick.

I picked my head up and asked for Deedee to throw me a piece of sandwich with our next feed. It’s not often that I get hungry for solids during a long swim, but I was really craving having something substantial in my stomach. At that feed, Captain Keith and Deedee told us how amazing we were doing, and I joked that we should swim right past Moloka’i and keep going until we reached Oahu. I noticed a small school of silver fish swimming with us under the bow.

I enjoyed feeling the power of the water and was fully present and engaged. I was happy to be exactly where I was in every moment without anticipation of where I would be in the next moment. I even allowed myself to break a law of marathon swimming by looking forward towards Moloka’i. It looked far, but instead of letting that cause me to feel stressed or frustrated, I simply thought, “Far is okay. I can do far.” I did not worry myself with how long it would take there and just focused on having fun with the swimming. At some point, Captain Keith informed us that we were stuck in a bit of a current and he was going to angle us more towards the west. We adjusted our sighting point and began making more forward progress towards Moloka’i.

I heard a squeaking noise that I assumed came from the boat, but then it occurred to me that it might be a dolphin. As I considered picking my head up to ask Deedee and Captain Keith whether they saw anything, a single dolphin swam under the boat and right up to my face. I yelled “DOLPHIN!” to the others, then watched as it majestically swam up to Abby and the bow of the boat in the same manner before swimming away. I felt a surge of energy that lasted through the next feed. It was so incredible to look directly into a dolphin’s eyes. It felt as if the dolphin was encouraging us to keep swimming strong, and I was thankful to have met this wild cheerleader.

Abby started picking up the pace and we swam a bit further apart. When the boat began drifting ahead with her, I became overwhelmed with fear that I was going to be left behind. I understand that this is irrational, but this worry materializes on occasion while I am swimming. Abby and I have talked about this before. The pod we train with in San Francisco is FAST, and I am always at the back. I love our pod, but being the caboose can be unnerving at times. The next time we stopped, I explained how I was feeling to Abby, and she immediately understood. We adjusted our distance and I calmed my nerves.

We fed again and then I noticed that I could see the ocean floor. When I did the Vikingsholm swim in Lake Tahoe in July 2022, I made the mistake of getting excited when I started to see the bottom of the lake. Unfortunately, I was just seeing the sand at the entry to Emerald Bay, and I still had about 1.5 miles to swim. Naturally, the entire rest of that swim was mentally excruciating, so I gave no meaning to seeing the sand off Moloka’i. I didn’t want to make that mistake again! I reminded myself that I could see the ocean floor for about an hour while swimming away from Maui. Instead of wondering how much longer we would be swimming, I simply appreciated the change in scenery and took pleasure in looking around for fish and turtles. As we got closer to Moloka’i, Captain Keith told us to sight on a house at the shoreline. He would need to maneuver around a reef and then would meet back up with us. The color of the water changed from deep blue to light blue to bright teal as we got closer to the island.

Deedee tossed us our last feed. We swam up the shoreline for a few more minutes before I saw Deedee and Captain Keith pointing towards the island when I picked up my head to sight on the boat. “Abby! It’s time to swim in!” She looked at me, then at the boat, then at the shoreline. We smiled at each other and made a 90 degree turn towards land. It was at this moment that I allowed myself to become flooded with emotion as I watched the ocean floor move closer with each stroke. I could see a person fishing from a jetty towards our left, as well as a small group of people sitting under a shade structure on the sand towards our right. Two people walked from the jetty towards the shade structure right before we were ready to stand up and exit the water. Both Abby and I wanted to be as minimally disruptive to the inhabitants of Moloka’i as possible, so we waited until the stretch of beach ahead of us was empty before walking up to dry sand. Once we were all the way out, we hugged and Abby congratulated me on completing my first channel swim. We made it!

We only spent a moment on shore before swimming back to the boat. Somehow it felt like the swim back took longer than our swim across the channel. Before climbing out of the water, Abby and I took some videos of us swimming with Moloka’i in the background. Captain Keith let us know that his friend was going to swim out to the boat for a ride back to Maui, so we had plenty of time to remove our layers of Desitin and put on our clothes. Abby called a restaurant on Maui and ordered lunch to be ready for pickup once we returned to Lahaina. Deedee let us know that we exited the water at 1301, for a total swim time of 6:10.31.

It took probably 45 minutes to motor back to Maui. As we were pulling up to the Mala Boat Ramp, we saw a massive pod of spinner dolphins swimming north. We all squealed with excitement as we watched the dolphins leap out of the water. It was the perfect way to end a magical experience. I am grateful to Pailolo Channel for allowing me to cross, and I will cherish the memories of my first channel swim forever.

Thank you, Keith Baxter, for your expert navigation. You kept us safe in that channel and ensured that our swim was successful and enjoyable. It was an honor being on your boat.

Thank you, Abby Bergman, for being an incredible training partner and friend. I will look forward to your next “I have an idea…” text.

Finally, thank you to my wife, Deedee Lundberg, who served triple duty as crew chief, observer, and social media manager for both of us. We could not have done this swim without your support. I love you.