George Town: Penny Palfrey, an Australian-British swimmer, braved shark-infested waters to set a record for an unassisted solo ocean swim with a 108 km marathon between two of the Cayman islands.
Palfrey, 48, came ashore on Grand Cayman on Sunday night and was so exhausted that she was barely able to stand after her 40 hours and 41 minutes in the water.
Severely dehydrated and unable to speak with a swollen tongue, she lifted her arms in triumph and glanced at hundreds of spectators before collapsing on the beach.
"This was the longest unassisted ocean solo swim," said Steven Munatones, a swim adviser and observer for the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame. "What Penny did physically and psychologically was beyond incredible."
To qualify for the record, according to Hall of Fame standards, the swimmer cannot use a shark cage, a wetsuit or flippers or draft off escort boats and must be verified by an independent observer.
The previous record was 101 km.
Guinness World Records uses looser guidelines for unassisted swims, according to Munatones, who keeps records for the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame in the Americas.
Munatones said the last 10 miles (16 km) of Palfrey's Bridge Swim -- so-called for the crossing between Little Cayman and Grand Cayman -- were the toughest as she had to fight a "wicked current" after more than 30 hours in the water.
"She was weak and her arm strokes were just slicing through the water," Munatones said after Palfrey came ashore. "She wasn't moving that fast but she just hung with it."
Although an escort boat was fitted with a shark shield that sends out electrical signals as a repellent, four white tip sharks approached Palfrey on Sunday within a few hours of each other. Crew estimated one shark was 9 feet long (2.7 metres).
While rarely seen in Cayman waters, white tips are known to be aggressive and dangerous to swimmers and divers. It is unlikely Palfrey was aware of the sharks as she pushed through long hours of fatigue and shoulder pain, said Munatones.
This was Palfrey's third attempt at the world record. Her previous two attempts in Hawaii were halted after she was severely stung by jellyfish.
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