In the final act of a movie, the loose threads of the story get tied up. Characters from earlier on reappear and help provide resolution.
In its own way, this swim, my final of the Ocean’s Seven felt like that.
Getting a Slot
Literally just booking a slot to swim Tsugaru was an journey on its own. I have emails with one company going back to 2019. They had limited availability in 2020 because of the Tokyo Olympics, so I opted to pass, to see if there were more options in a later year. The COVID-19 global pandemic happened in 2020, so neither the Tokyo Olympics, nor any international travel happened to Tokyo anyways.
I kept emailing to check about availability, and I was told that I was on the list of swimmers that would get scheduled for 2024.
Limited Options
Then, July 2023 turned out to be a really bad year for Tsugaru Strait swims. Sarah Thomas wrote a post with a lot of valuable details about her experience in the process. She recommended not booking with that company (luckily I hadn’t put down a deposit yet) and in the end, the company said they would not take international swimmers in the following year (which meant me). One swimmer, Andy Donaldson, successfully made the crossing! Somehow he got the enigmatic Tsugaru Strait observer Mr. Haruyuki Ishii to come out of retirement. A friend knew his coach, so I reached out to her via email, but never heard back.
I was highly motivated to find a way to come up with other options. I reached out to SERC members Steve Walker and Cameron Bellamy who had their own misadventures in Japan many years before to see if they had alternate pilots–no dice.
My next plan was to maybe charter my own boat and find a navigator. I even emailed Pádraig at Infinity in Ireland, who has some multi-regional tide-navigating experience to see if I could hire him to help. He told me “find me a boat and I’m there” so I got to searching. I do read write some Japanese, but not at a very adult level, so I started working with my friend Lenny’s friend Joanna (who is much more fluent) to help cold email some boats.
A Chance Connection
While all this searching was happening, in August 2023, we were hosting the Bondi Icebergs at SERC. My mentor Simon Dominguez introduced me to his friend Ross Youngman from Australia. Simon is a great hype man, mentioned my goal of swimming the Ocean’s Seven, and Ross replied that he knew Andy Donaldson, and put us in touch!
I asked Andy how he was able to find a boat, and he just immediately gave me Mr. Ishii’s email. I worked with Joanna to craft an email in Japanese, sent it, and promptly got a response in English. We started talking options for slots.
Mr. Ishii offered me a week in July 2024, a “risky” week due to rain and winds, or possibly something the next year. I wasn’t sure how to proceed, so I reached out to Sarah Thomas, who even after her frustrating experience, was extremely supportive and gave me some key questions to check with Mr. Ishii. Specifically about what weather conditions he was willing to go out in, and if my slot was all mine or shared with others. Once I got those answers back, Sarah confirmed the limits were very reasonable, matching to the more standardized English Channel pilots. With that, I was ready to book the “risky” mid July window!
Making our way to Cape Tappi
Flash forward to a few days ago, my friends Mandy (who has crewed many of my swims and speaks a little Japanese) and Lenny (a fellow pool and open water swimmer from SF who speaks Japanese) travelled to Japan with me to crew my swim. We flew into Tokyo, spent a few days there hosted by Lenny’s grandma (the sweetest woman). Then we took the bullet train up to Sendai for a night, halfway to Aomori.
My friend Luca swam the Tsugaru Strait in 2019 and his post is a great checklist for managing the travel parts of this swim. I copied his recommendation to stay at Hotel Tappi, and rented a car near the Shin-Aomori station.
The timing was perfect, since Mr. Ishii scheduled a meeting with the pilot Mr. Mizushima the day we got in, which was the day before my 5-day swim window started.
Unfortunately, when we showed up to get the car that I had rented, I discovered that Japanese car rentals require an International Driver’s Permit. This is a form that you get via in-person application in the US at a AAA location, or something that you plan for a 5 week turnaround by snail mail. Since the rest of my trip was only a week and a half, it was not a viable option, and we had to scrap the car rental and take an hourlong taxi to the hotel. The hotel does offer a shuttle from the train station, but it needs a reservation 3 days in advance, and also has a limited schedule.
I was worried we’d swim the first day of my window, and without a car, grocery shopping would be tough. We asked out taxi driver to stop at a supermarket on the way, and he politely obliged. I didn’t have room in my bag for all the pre-mixed liquid feeds that I’d need, so I planned to buy Japanese drinks. Back in SF, I went to a Japanese market and tried Pocari Sweat and Aquarius as swim feeds, and confirmed that Aquarius would be my drink of choice here.
Eventually we made it to the hotel, a little later than planned, and Mr. Ishii generously drove us to meet with Mr. Mizushima. The meeting included two representatives from the nearby Nakadomari Town, which is starting to take a more active role in Tsugaru Strait channel swimming.
We met on Thursday. Friday was going to have 15kt winds, which is a lot. The meeting followed a Japanese meeting style which was maybe a little more circular than I am used to as an American, but eventually the group came to consensus that we’d swim on Saturday. Saturday was also advantageous because Mr. Ishii’s friend Maya was available to join, and Maya is fluent in both English and Japanese. Since all three of me, Lenny and Mandy speak some Japanese, we had been able to get by, but it would be a relief to have a professional.
Mr. Ishii had done an interview with WOWSA about Bárbara Hernández Huerta’s swim a few days before, so I read that on the plane. Having the information in the interview was really helpful, because they mentioned keeping feeds quick, so I was able to tell Mr. Ishii I was prepared to be flexible and try to speed up my feeds.
Swim Start
We got to the boat at 2:15am to be ready for a 2:30am departure, to boat out to the start, about an hour south to Cape Kodomari (we had been staying in Cape Tappi). Starting southwest this much gives some wiggle room for the currents in the middle of the crossing.
We got our things in the boat, and there was no ceremony, no announcement, the pilot just started the boat and started motoring. There was a lot of what I’ll call “nonverbal communication”. I would have guessed that given the number of bilingual and partially bilingual folks we had onboard, there would have been some explanation? Since this wasn’t my first rodeo, it was fine, the general outline of most channel swims is roughly the same, so we know what to expect at a high level.
We arrived, waited for sunrise (see notes in Sarah’s post about night swimming no longer being allowed), then I greased up and hopped in the water to swim out to a rock to touch, wait for a horn, and then start.
The water was warm in the beginning, maybe 72ºF and super clear and super blue. I started off feeling good, moving quickly. On most swims, I hold 66 strokes per minute, but on this one I started at about 77. I didn’t really notice, but if I had known, I probably would have tried to slow down a bit. I am guessing that with all the talk about quick feeds, I was worried about not being fast enough overall, so I overcompensated.
I’m usually a pretty aware swimmer, I generally know what’s going on with the crew, I can see when the crew starts shuffling around to prepare for a feed. There was a teal ladder halfway up the side of the boat, on my side. Mr. Ishii tied a thermometer off the ladder, so a few minutes before each feed, I’d see him walk up to grab it and record the number, and then get behind me to get a stroke count.
The boat’s bathroom was 4 walls of plywood and a door in the back of the boat, so I could even see who was walking to go to the bathroom.
I noticed early on that my left earplug went missing. I don’t usually lose earplugs while swimming, I called out to my crew and gave them the other. We had a spare pair on the boat, but I was worried that somehow I’d immediately lose the other, so I decided to go without earplugs while the water was still warm.
The Sun
I swam on the right side of the boat, breathing to the left. I tried to stay aligned with the pilot near the cockpit/shed in the back and kept a close eye on him. I noticed that at one point, he turned around to face behind us, clasped his hands together, and did a small bow. I had a feeling it was the Shinto practice of bowing to a particular deity, but I didn’t know who. Between swim strokes as my left hand came across, I pulled my left hand in a little short to meet my right hand. I clasped my hands similarly together for a quick second while turned towards the pilot. He saw me, and I saw a smile crack across his otherwise generally stoic face, it was a cute moment. Maya saw him smile and asked him what happened. I found out later from Maya that he was bowing to the sun to pray for good weather.
The sun rises from the east. And the swim was from south to north, so I expected the sun to be on my right side while swimming (which also happens to be my blind side).
A few times early on I saw the sun past the boat on to my left. I realized this seemed wrong, but I decided to try to think about something else, because I didn’t want to worry about us possibly going in the wrong direction.
At one feed, I checked in with my crew on the boat. I asked if they had any info for me, and they said I was halfway across in terms of distance. My feed schedule has pain meds at the 6 hour mark, and this was before that, so it must have been somewhere between 4 and 5 hours in.
I start with an odd feed schedule generally so that I lose track of time while I swim, because knowing the time makes me worry. I knew that we started around sunrise (a little after 4am). I knew that when the sun was directly overhead, that it was about noon so that would be a little shy of 8 hours
Reflecting on the swim, I needed to take a lot of it on faith. We didn’t do a lot of talking about the route, or how things were supposed to go beforehand. I didn’t get much in the way of direction. Again, at this point in my career, I’ve done a lot of swims, so I generally have a good idea of what to expect, so nothing is usually too shocking. You just have to trust the process.
Hurrying Up
The recurring thing for this swim was quick feeds. A typical feed for me is a part of a Stinger energy waffle, and some Vitamin Water that I sip from a bottle. It’s relatively quick but just in case it wasn’t, we came up with a plan B to take the cap off the bottle so I could chug.
Anyways, turns out my feeding was fast enough, but just like many other swims for me, peeing was my weakness. I have trouble peeing while kicking, so I need to pause and float for a few seconds to pee. Once I’m able to really pee, it’s a huge relief and I know I swim much better.
After a few failed pauses, I asked my crew to add some caffeine to my next feed so that would make peeing easier. In one of the WOWSA interviews, they mentioned a Japanese swimmer who used different kinds of teas, so I had picked up tea at the supermarket and we used that as my caffeine fix.
Mr. Ishii asked Maya what I was doing when I was hanging back to pee, and she explained to him. Mr. Ishii, who mostly speaks in Japanese, just yelled “PEE!” at me.
Later on in the swim, the wind picked up. I started to drift a bit farther from the boat, but still kept pace with it. Mandy and Lenny asked me to swim closer to the boat, so I did. I started to drift a little bit away but still intended to stay close, and they started yelling! “Hey! Stay close!” and seemed to look past me. At the next feed I asked what was going on, because my worst fear was that they saw some wildlife behind me, and staying close to the boat was a safety thing. It turns out that since it was so windy, it was safer for me to stay close to the boat.
I spent a lot of time watching the teal ladder underwater next to me, and the water was clear enough that I could see the boat’s propeller as well. To be honest, I didn’t love being able to see either of these. The ladder kind of ate away at me as a way to touch it and end the swim (I never wanted to give up, but the intrusive thought of “but what if…” was there). The propeller, I didn’t like seeing it because it’s an injury risk, and there was no cage around it. I’m so used to the murky water was have in the SF bay because I can’t see anything and I so I don’t worry about it.
I give my crew a lot of leeway to be flexible with the timing of swim feeds if needed. There was a gap where I think I had a little bit too much time between feeds and got very hangry. I got a little cranky and threw a small tantrum.
Home Stretch
I had heard about a dramatic water temperature drop when approaching Hokkaido, so I was bracing myself for it. There were definitely some cold patches, but none of them lasted for more than 30 seconds before warming back up.
Looking at the final map, there was a big S-curve that we made. During the swim, I had no idea it was happening. I knew the wind had picked up, I started to see Hokkaido more clearly in front of us. We seemed to be aiming to the left of a big mountain, so I asked the crew if we were aiming for the left. They weren’t sure, they said we might switch to the right side at some point?
During the last section of the swim, the boat took a wild, abrupt sharp left turn and got ahead of me. The bathroom door in the back swung wide open and I could see the yellow coat from the pilot inside. Logically, if the pilot was in the bathroom, then he must not have been driving the boat.
I yelled out to my crew to find out about what happened, and they told me “the wind”. You can see this “big” swing as a zag on the tracker map below.
As we kept going, I could tell my crew had started to aim at the center of the big island ahead, so I started sighting on that. There was a corner with a wall and white pain on the left side. My crew yelled “hey, aim to the right of that white wall” and I rolled my eyes and told them I already was.
At the swim start, Maya reported that Mr. Ishii insisted that Maya would get in the water to the finish with me so she could guide me in. Maya is a sprint triathlete (she was even wearing her Alcatraz Escape jacket on the boat), but she told me ahead of time she wasn’t as confident in the cold water here, so she’d be wearing a wetsuit.
The crew told me I had only “500 meters” left (I know what 500 yards looks like based on the Aquatic Park opening in SF at home and I can tell you, that was a probably an undercount). Maya got her wetsuit on and hopped in. She was moving quickly and gliding through the water when she got in, which makes sense because well, sprint triathlete. I don’t think she was as confident in the choppy water, so I slowed up to look back at her a few times. As we kept going, she fell back more and more and I decided that it was time to finish on my own. I had to fight my “mama bear” urge to make sure folks stay safe (my pod that I swim with normally knows I will stop to make sure everybody is safe).
As I approached the shore, I could start to see big rocks through the clear blue water. Then, lots of seaweed. I’ve had a kelp bed finish in the Santa Monica Bay where I had to pull myself across large kelp fronds. Luckily, this was much more sparse so I didn’t need to panic. I dodged and weaved between the kelp and some smaller rocks that broke through the surface, then made my way to the rock wall of the shore. I raised my hand, heard the horn, and felt so relieved to be done with this swim, and done with the Ocean’s Seven.
My final time was 10hr14min, which is about what I had expected ahead of time, based on the other two Tsugaru Strait swims this summer. No complaints from me about that!
Finishing Up
I slowly made my way back to the boat. Lenny hopped in the water to congratulate me. I finally got to climb up that silly teal ladder.
The moment after I had triumphantly pulled my cap and goggles off my head, we noticed somebody’s hat floating in the water. We realized it was one of the two crew from Nakadomari. I rolled my eyes and dove right back off the boat to grab it, and made a second trimphant return to the boats.
When we got back to the docks, the pilot Mr. Mizushima’s wife was waiting onshore with a giant bouquet to congratulate me. She was so sweet! We had met her earlier in the week, she sells souvenirs nearby where we’re staying. I kid around that my Infinity beanie from the North Channel is the hardest I’ve ever had to work for a beanie, so I think that bouquet is the hardest I’ve ever had to work for some flowers.
