I swam the Napali Coast–15 miles!
After three weeks on the road consisting of Soul Surfer promotions in Japan, ten days in France for the Swatch Girls Pro (Surf Contest), and (4 days in NYC for some special media with a few of my sponsors – Damon System Braces and ZICO Coconut Water, all I wanted to do was escape technology, play outside, be a mermaid, hang with my good friends and family, and have some quiet time. And that’s exactly what I did.
I swam the Napali Coast!!! Napali means “the cliffs;” it is 15 miles of sheer rugged cliff, with a few secluded beaches, which stretches down Kauai’s Northwest coastline. It’s absolutely gorgeous! No cars. You can hike it, or what I did growing up was kayak it! I love it. Growing up (and still) it was one of those things I really looked forward to doing with my family in the summer!
This summer one of my best friends, who I love to adventure with, and I decided to SWIM the whole coast! After traveling for three weeks we were feeling real FIT and ready to swim 15 miles. Haha, not really. But we went ahead and did it anyway with another friend who joined us for the swimming adventure. We swam the coast over a period of three days and stopped to camp at two locations on the way, hiking and hanging out in between! A bunch of our good friends kayaked along side of us for safety precautions and to fill us with water and energy while swimming. (Thanks, friends!)
My brother and sister-in-law and their beautiful baby girl joined us on the adventure! And with them they brought our new friend Kari Disney. I had met Kari on Skype through Friends of Bethany Hamilton my non-profit organization! Kari was born without her left arm and hopes to encourage others through her life story. It was awesome to hang and take her on a little Kauai adventure! (Read More about Kari’s Experience)
The swim was challenging, I would say for myself it was more of a mental challenge. It’s definitly a hard swim but for me swimming comes more natural. The first day we swam about 6 miles which took us three hours. The second two swims were about two hours each. The ocean was open and deep; it was a little rough, but I like it. Sometimes we had waves pushing us towards our goal and sometimes we had gnarly currents pushing against us! Most of the swim we were staring at sand, besides when we breathe and glance at the beautiful rugged mountains! Some of the swim we swam over reef! At one point we were swimming and there were about 15 honu (sea turtles) swimming near us!
As for sharks, I’m sure a lot of you are probably wondering if I’m scared of sharks. Well, I don’t know really. I guess I think about them every now and then, but am pretty fine to not worry too much.
It was an amazing feeling when we finished! We all felt very accomplished (and a bit relieved) to be done.
Someday I would like to swim the entire Napali coast in one day!
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