Ep. 1177: Open Water Marathon Swimming with Rob Hutchins

You're listening to the Adventure Sports Podcast.

We talk with adventures from around the globe to give you the inspiration you need to get

started in the outdoors or keep moving if you're already there.

Now here's your host, Kurt Lindville.

Hello friends, welcome to another episode of the Adventure Sports Podcast.

I have Rob Hutchings with us today.

And this is a different sort of a sport than we have covered very much.

We have had long distance swimming before, but Rob does amazing long distance swims.

And in New Zealand, in Newfoundland, different places, he calls it marathon swimming and it's

just super cool.

So we're going to dive right into that Rob, welcome to the Adventure Sports Podcast.

Thanks for having me, Kurt.

Well Rob, first of all, where are you today?

I'm in Christchurch, New Zealand.

That's where I've lived for the last just over seven years, but I'm from Newfoundland,

in Canada.

So that's kind of the funny thing because I could hear just a touch of New Zealand in

your voice, but I knew it wasn't home home because it's definitely not.

So, and I do hear like that Eastern, Northeastern Canada in your voice too.

Yeah, I've lived around the world, I'm from Newfoundland, I've lived in England, that's

where I did my education.

My wife is Australian, I lived there for 15 years and now we both have funny accents

over on this side of the ditch as we call it, the Tasman.

But yeah, we've lived in New Zealand for just over seven years.

I had a friend from Scotland who had been in the US for so long that he said he goes back

to Scotland and people make fun of him because of his US accent.

He's in the United States, people make fun of him because of his Scottish accent.

He's like, you don't have a home anymore.

Yeah, my language is a bit messed up because I have slang language from several countries

and sometimes I don't even know where it really more comes from, so yeah.

That's great.

Well, what got you into swimming first of all, just in the very beginning?

Why swimming?

Well, when I was really young, I was always really, really active and hyperactive and

that sort of thing.

But I wasn't any good at the conventional sports.

We had baseball, hockey, basketball in particular, that sort of stuff I tried, but if you put

a ball in my hands or put a ball at my feet, nothing good is going to happen.

It took me a number of years to figure that out.

After failing miserably with basketball and baseball and a few of the other sports, I got

into swimming.

I started swimming just before I turned 13 and very quickly realized how much I loved

it.

It wasn't a natural swimmer.

I mean, I was never became one of the top swimmers for anything like that, but after getting

the coordination for learning how to do the stroke, I quickly realized I really loved

long-distance stuff, and there was a triathlete who trained with the swim team.

He was about nearly five years older than me.

I was 13, he was 18, and I went up to him on the pool deck and told him I wanted to be

a triathlete like him, and he took me under his wing.

His name was Jamie American, and we're still friends, and he helped me learn how to train

for a long-distance swimming in triathlon.

And in triathlon, swimming was always my strength, like I was a better swimmer than I was

cyclist, certainly, and running, even though I got better at those things as well.

The only natural athletic talent I seemed to have is swimming in a straight line in the

open water.

Shortly after that.

That's hard to do, by the way.

Yeah, after practicing that for a while, a very short amount of time I actually discovered

I'm actually good at swimming in a straight line.

And my swimming coach saw that I both loved open water swimming in triathlon, and she

basically introduced marathon swimming to me, and she said, you can do both sports.

Let's get you into marathon swimming too, and well, he went from there.

That's so cool.

And by the way, I love swimming, and people that listen to the Adventure Sports Podcast

are probably tired of me saying, oh, I love this, I love that, I love this, but I do,

I'm no good at any of it, I just dabble in everything.

But when I was in high school, I got a stress fracture running cross-country track.

And so to train, when I couldn't run, I went to the pool and started swimming laps.

And then after that, I found that I really preferred open water.

So we lived somewhat close to Tinkiller, Reservoir, and Northeastern Oklahoma, and my thing

was to go out on the open water and just go, you know, I just found that so fun.

So I understand where you're coming from.

It's a unique experience.

Yeah, like open water swimming for me, I mean, it evolved into, I mean, first I was mostly

competitive for quite a long time, both in triathlon and marathon swimming, but probably shortly

before I moved to New Zealand, I realized I was not necessarily done with competition,

but I was realizing I was liking the Adventure stuff more.

And there's something very unique about Adventure, Marathon swimming, like I find it quite

meditative.

You know, I love the scenery and everything else, especially here in New Zealand.

I mean, you can't really beat it.

And there's always been something I've been able to get into like a meditative state that

I do yoga as well as part of my training, and I'm quite a yoga enthusiast as well, but

I've never been able to learn how to meditate like I imagine a Buddhist monk would be doing.

So the closest I've ever gotten to what I imagine a monk would be doing when they're meditating

is when I'm long-distance marathon swimming.

Well, you know, you've got the controlled breathing, the rhythmic nature of it, the smoothness,

the floating, you're not even walking on ground, you're floating.

And I get there whenever I do long swims, I come out the other side, I feel different.

Yeah, no, it's an incredible feeling.

And then like it's, it's in the long smooth swims I get there, and then of course I do the rough water

swimming.

It's not quite the same meditative state when you're either in a river or in the surf swim,

but in the long distance, the lakes and the, when the oceans come, I can really get into the

meditative state there.

That's cool.

I've got to tell one quick story because I think you'll find it hilarious.

You've got a story about a cow that we're going to get to.

I've got a story about some dogs.

Yep.

So I went out to Tin Killer to do one of my swims and I decided to swim across a bay.

And two Labrador's were following me, I don't know why, but I jumped in the water to

do to swim across this bay and it wasn't a long swim, maybe a quarter mile, something

like that.

But I get out in the middle, I look behind me and both of these Labrador's are in the

water with me.

And one of them is like a nine month old pup and the other one is its mom.

The pup starts to panic, it starts to get tired and starts climbing on top of its mom.

Of course, he's drowning his mother, right?

And I'm like, oh, no.

So I have to swim back to these dogs and I grab the pup off of its mom and I throw the

pup as far as I can so that it will have to swim back to us.

Inside swim a few strokes, she's right behind me and then the pup catches up and starts

drowning its mom again.

I don't know how many laps I went back and forth, throwing this puppy off of its mother

because the puppy was strong enough to make it.

I mean, it was going to be fine.

It just didn't need to be climbing on top.

Anyway, long story short, all three of us completed the swim and I felt really glad

that nobody, nobody, you know, succumbed to the scenario, but man, that was exhausting

and completely different than what I expected.

It was not meditative, Rob.

No, not every swim is meditative, but, you know, there's always something weird that happens,

but, yeah, no, I mean, I've had other wildlife experiences in the water as well and it's

some of them end up being very hilarious like that, yeah.

Well, I tell you, so one thing I want to point out here, I grew up in Oklahoma.

It is hot.

And the summertime there, it is killer hot.

So the only way I could survive the heat, because I'm just not genetically predisposed

for it, was to be in the water.

So I was in the water all the time.

I love the water, you know, but you didn't grow up in a place like that.

It's cold, buddy.

Yeah, well, it helps being genetically about 50 or 60% polar bear, that certainly may,

like I do well in the cold and in cooler temperatures.

I mean, I lived in Australia for a long time, and my wife's Australian, but, yeah, she's

never been able to understand what minus 30 degrees means, but, you know, I think it's

getting hot when it's above seven or eight degrees Celsius, so.

Well, I mean, what is that in Fahrenheit, seven?

I can't speak Fahrenheit language, I'm afraid, but I'm going to say it's roughly 50-ish.

I could do the conversion, but I'm not going to take the time.

So those big swims, first of all, where you're in New Zealand, I want people to know this,

because I think it's funny.

For me, it's December the 23rd, but it's tomorrow where you are, which means it is Christmas

Eve in New Zealand, and you're on the Adventure Sports Podcast.

That's right.

Well, thank you for doing this interview, even though it's such a, I think Christmas Eve

is such a special day.

I really do.

But I have a question about New Zealand now.

How far south are you in New Zealand, and how cold is it there?

Well, I'm in Christchurch, which is about roughly midway down the South Island on the

East Coast.

So you can go about, I think, in Vicargal, the southern tip is maybe about six hour drive

south from here.

That's the most southern tip of South Island.

So yeah, it's...

Well, you're in the cooler part of New Zealand.

Yeah, I mean, we have the mountain range here.

Now, I mean, Christchurch can get warm in the summer.

The weather's extremely variable, because it's a relatively small narrow strip of land

with a mountain range, and we've got a Pacific on one side, we've got the Tasman on the

other side, and we have the southern ocean down bottom.

So whenever the wind changes direction, I mean, several days back, it was pushing 30 degrees,

and I mean, that by, you know, Celsius, which is pretty warm.

But the other day, it was about 12 degrees, because when the wind changes, it can be quite

cool.

So the weather does change quite unpredictably.

We don't get snow on the ground that much in Christchurch in the winter, which is in

July and August, and being Canadian, that always will seem weird to me.

But, you know, so it does get cool, like, I mean, you'll wear your puffer jacket and things

like that.

And, you know, up in the mountains, so you can ski, and, you know, you got, there's lots

of snow up in the mountains, but at sea level in Christchurch, it's rare to get snow.

It does happen, but it doesn't last very long.

So what about the water?

What about the water temperature?

Were you swim, though?

I, you know, right now it's pleasant enough, like it's probably around 15, 16 degrees,

and it will be for most of the summer, and I do some cold water summing through the

cooler months as well.

And so, you know, the water temperature is not a problem in the ocean this time of year.

The glacial lakes, they're always going to be cold.

Right.

Right.

A lot of the lakes that I swim across are glacial fat, and like I did a short swim, maybe

about it, I think it was 9K, I did a double crossing of a four and a half K, like last

week of October, and there was snow on the mountains directly next to it.

I wore my thermal wetsuit, it was very cold, it was about, I'm going to say six, maybe

seven degrees water temperature, you know, five or six degrees, you know, above freezing,

so that was, that was, that was cold.

Wow.

So, it's funny that you're bringing this up, this summer, well on the podcast I was talking

about doing snorkeling in rivers, and a friend of mine said, okay, you do that, let's

do that.

So, I got a wetsuit, but it's just, it's very, very thin, it's like two mills or three

mills depending on the part, but anyway, it's, we went into snow fed mountain lake at 10,000

feet and snorkeled there, and the wetsuit was just not enough.

What, you mentioned your thermal wetsuit, how thick is it?

I think it's about four mills, but it's got a thermal lining, I wear a wetsuit all the

time, not for cold protection, like I don't need the cold protection, but I'm a freckled

redhead from Canada, you know, we're just not designed to live on the world surface,

we redheads, and I'm, you know, swimming is normally a sport where you're not wearing

very much, but when I was competitive in marathon swimming, I wasn't wearing wetsuits, but

I mean, I just, you know, I couldn't deal with the sunburn, so I wear a, I wear a two mill

wetsuit just for sun protection, and, you know, wetsuits can be, I won't use the word

controversial, but, you know, I mean, when you're doing competitive things and when you're

looking to set records on the, on the recognized route, I mean, wetsuits do offer a modest

advantage, but, you know, I'm 50 years old, I'm not going to set any world records or anything

like that, and, you know, I've had cancer once, so I don't want skin cancer, so I wear a thin

wetsuit for, I'm in the summer, simply for sun protection, and, you know, on a long swim,

I've got to reapply sunscreen to my face and hands, you know, depending on how long it is,

often two, three times, for, yeah, because I am a redhead, so.

Well, let's talk about some of these swims, so people know, you know, these are not short swims,

these are big swims, and, so, first of all, you swam two different UNESCO World Heritage sites,

and share with us what that is, so that people have some context.

Well, the UNESCO World Heritage sites, I mean, basically it's, you know, geological and aquatic

work, I mean, basically, they're very, very unique fjords, and in Milford Sound, New Zealand is

one of the iconic landmarks and waterways in New Zealand, you know, the fjordland down in

the southwest corner of South Island is, I'm not sure how many fjords there are, but there's dozens

and dozens and dozens of fjords, and Milford Sound is basically considered the icon, and it's a

World Heritage site, and I swam down in the fjords before, and normally there's a fair amount of

boat traffic in Milford Sound. I mean, you can do long distance swim there, and people have swam

there, but there is a fair amount of boat traffic because it's a popular tourist site,

but I did it just a handful of days before the borders reopened after the COVID lockdown,

and so I got the water taxi out to the end of the fjord where it meets the open ocean, and it's

about 16 kilometers, and I swam back, and there was a couple of tour boats, but it was only domestic

tourists, but I got to do it at a really unique time, because while I'm always happy to swim,

and you know, I mean, whenever I've done some long swims and tour boats go past, I mean,

you get a little bit of a cheering squad, but it was even more peaceful than normal,

because I believe there were only two tour boats past me, the whole time I was swimming,

which took about six hours, so that was just a really special time, and I mean,

you know, there's this iconic peak, called Miter Peak, that is just the most stunning looking mountain,

you know, with the backdrop of the water, and on a clear day, like I had for Milford Sound,

I was really lucky, and the fjord one can get drenched with rain, but I had the most beautiful day

you could possibly imagine, where the water was just like a mirror, and the other thing that was

special about Milford Sound is because it does get so much rain, it's a saltwater fjord,

but there's so much rain draining off the mountains, you actually got about a meter,

a meter and a half of a layer of fresh water on there, so like mildly taste the salt,

it was almost as if we were swimming through fresh water, but you're in the ocean.

Well, that's crazy, so it's really kind of brackish mixed, that's interesting.

Yeah, and yeah, that was one of the most, it had to be like one of the most incredible

beautiful swims I'd done to that point, and yeah, and I got out of the water having successfully

done that, and I immediately thought I wanted to go back to Newfoundland, which I hadn't been to

a while, to swim Western Ripond, which I'm sure we'll get to, because that's almost exactly

the same size as Milford Sound, and it's the largest fresh, I'm told it's the largest fresh water

fjord in North America. Interesting, we'll come back to that, because I do want to talk about it,

but you just said 16 kilometers. Yep, that's a long distance, and you're in Milford Sound.

I guess I'm ready for the Hawaii question. Yep, well, why do you do it? What's the driver?

Well, it does come to having this love of the open water, and very shortly after becoming a

pool swimmer when I was 13, I realized I liked the long distance stuff, and that started out as

triathlon, and kept up that, but then got into marathon swimming, and part of it's the feeling of

freedom that I get in the open water. I really love just being out there where you can switch off

the busyness of the world. I really, really love just that meditative feeling that I often get to

in the open water, and it's just the unique way of seeing different parts of the environment,

that's not many other people get to see it that way. I'm told I'm the only person who swam

the pool length of Milford Sound. I know other people have swam there, like done out and back swims,

a certain amount of distance, but it was just this very, very unique way of seeing such beautiful

parts of the world. You get interactions with the wildlife like dolphins came up,

three dolphins flanked me for several minutes. They must have thought I was a funny looking seal,

I guess, and they were playing around with me for several minutes while I was swimming

Milford, and that's happened in a few other spots, heads from interactions with dolphins.

It's just this really unique way of challenging yourself in different environments.

I always love the feeling of pushing myself, and I love being in the water and one of the ways

I often have adventures do a big marathon swim one day, and next day go up a mountain either hiking

or trail running or something like that, so you get to both see the beautiful waterways and then

get up and see it from the top on the mountains. Oh, so cool. You know, I interviewed Epic Bill

Bradley a few weeks ago, and his episode just came out, actually fairly recently, but he's been

working, I'm going to say it this way, working on the English Channel project, and I call it at

that because he has multiple attempts. He's trying again, but he described something, and I want to

know if you've experienced this. He was in some really bad high seas, it was not a good time to be

trying to swim, but he swam until he could no longer keep his feet at the surface. They started

sinking deeper and deeper until he was fighting to keep his head above water, just because of

exhaustion. Have you ever been to that point in your swims? I've had a few, the longest I swam

33 kilometers, which took me a bit over 11 hours. I've definitely been completely exhausted

several times. Most of the times where I've reached that absolute don't have another stroke or

another step in me, it was in some triathlons. When I swam like Pukekki in April, that was 28

kilometers, that took me eight and a half hours. I was definitely cooked when I finished that.

I haven't reached the point where my legs were sinking, but it does help having rather chunky

heavy legs that seem to float quite well. I've experienced some pretty incredible states of fatigue

in the open water, but I haven't got to the point where anyone's needed to pull me out for safety

reasons. I've generally been able the only few times I've had to be forced to abandon this

woman's mostly due to weather, but I have gotten to those absolutely finished fatigue states in

long distance triathlon and a few of the other backcountry expeditions I've done for sure.

For the sake of the listening audience here, how do you do it safely? If you're doing a swim and

you get to the point of exhaustion, that could be dangerous. What do you do for safety?

With Milford Soundi, it was with the water taxi. There's a Milford Sound track, it's a famous trail

that starts next to the fjord and goes into the backcountry and the water taxi takes you to the

beginning of the trail, but since there weren't that many tourists around, I had the water taxi

accompanied me and I had two friends kayaking with me. What I often do, because I moved to New

Zealand in my 40s and I didn't know anybody. I just started using the Facebook group saying,

hey, I want to do this swim. I'm looking for kayak support and I've always been managed to find

some kayakers and sometimes there's a support boat depending on the size of the swim with me.

Basically, if there's any trouble, the kayakers will pull me ashore. We have the little beacons,

if we're somewhere really remote, the helicopter can come rescue if necessary. That's never happened

with me yet. I've always got someone with me. Usually I'm with two or three kayakers and sometimes

with a support boat as well. Well, I'm glad to hear you say that. I was just thinking about

someone thinking, that sounds like fun and they jump in a body of water that's more than they

really should take on and they get three quarters of the way across. I've been in some swims where I

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I wouldn't say it was dangerous. Like when I started Milford Sound, there's the point where it meets

the open ocean. And I was just looking at the map. I said, right, I'll start from there. I'll make

sure I'm swimming with the tide because you can't go against the tide. You know, Michael Phelps

couldn't go against the tide and he's faster than me. But basically there's a there's a current

that I didn't know about. Now I asked the water taxi guy who basically lives down there. And he

was a pretty introverted guy and he didn't tell me about this current. And basically, Milford Sound

is actually about a little over 16 K. And I jumped in the water right where the water meets the

open ocean. And I realized, you know, maybe half hour into this whim that I wasn't going anywhere.

And I was thinking, Chief, did I, you know, I triple checked the tide. And I thought, I must be

going against the tide. I must have got this wrong somehow even though I checked and checked and

checked again and checked again. And anyway, I was like, I'm not going anywhere. There's there's

no way this is ever going to happen. And my kayakers were having trouble moving as well. And we

went back to the boat. And I got back on the boat and I was frustrated because you know, it's

a long way to get there. And I thought over half hour, 40 minutes in. And the support go a guy,

he was a pretty quiet guy. And he just said, Oh, yeah, there's this big outgoing current.

If we go one K in or so, the current's not there. And it should be pretty calm.

And I was like, any even clarified, he said there were two elite level kayakers. I don't know if

you've ever heard of the coast to coast race in New Zealand. But two guys who were former champions

of the coast to coast a couple of weeks prior, they tried to kayak out doubtful sound, which is,

you know, if you're not too far from Milford out around in the ocean and then come back into Milford.

And two elite level kayakers couldn't beat this current. They had to turn around and go back into

doubtful. And of course, any competent kayaker is going to be much faster than the swimmer. And

they couldn't beat it. And I was like, Oh, why didn't you just tell me that? I would have just

started, you know, and anywhere we got in the boat. And we went in. And I think it was about 800

meters into the fjords. And I jumped in and the water was smooth. And the swim went fine from

there. But I'd very specifically asked him. And like, is there anything I should know that I

don't know? And he didn't tell me. And he goes, Oh, yeah, there's a big current there.

No way you're ever going to beat that. And I was like, Oh, okay. Thanks for telling me.

But made for funny. Well, it's a great place to train. You could just stay in one place like a

treadmill. I mean, it was great. It was very, very fortunate that, you know, I had the support

though of there. Because I mean, if he just left me out there with kayakers, we would have been

finished. That's crazy. Yeah. But that was, that was, it was not good in the moment. But it ended

up being a funny part of the story. But the rest of the swim was very, very smooth and we didn't

have any problems. And, but because I spent about half hour or so fighting a current that I was

never going to beat, just as I was finishing the swim, maybe 20 minutes, you know, the tide shifted

to the last seven or eight hundred meters of the swim actually had to fight the tide just as it

shifted. So normally I get through seven or eight hundred meters in, you know, less than 10 minutes.

But that took almost half an hour to get that last bit.

So, yeah. So there's always something unexpected and weird that happens almost always in my

marathon swims. It never quite goes according to plan. Well, we've probably said this a hundred times

on this show. But the adventure begins when the unexpected thing does happen. It's when the

plans don't turn out the way, you know, what you plan doesn't, the reality doesn't turn out the way

you planned. And that's what makes the story interesting too. Yep. That's exactly right. And

I'm writing about it. I'm going to have a swing at writing another book and I wrote about

Milford Sound. And that was just one of those things that life just doesn't go according to plan.

I mean, it's important to make the plans and the safety plans and all that sort of thing when

it in any kind of adventure. But you got to be able to adaptable and go be able to keep going when

things don't go according to plan. Well, I want to talk about some of these other big swims that you've

done. But first, you're a health care professional. I am. What does swimming do for people as far as health

is concerned? Well, there's a lot of things that can do and there's been a lot of relatively

recent research on cold water immersion, both just simple immersion and also, you know, swimming

in relatively cool water. I mean, that's the found they've had that's really, really calming

effects on the nerve system and really an immune system boost. Now purely for joints, I mean, you

know, swimming, you know, can be really, really good for, you know, most of your joints and that sort

of thing. Obviously, there's no impact or anything like that. So, you know, swimming is one of the

things that can be really, really good for injury rehab, like if you're not a swimmer, but you've

injured yourself in some other way. You know, swimming can be incredible for rehab, both just the

action of being in the water with some resistance, but not very much and really helps improve

range of motion, things like that. So for injuries to the, you know, any leg injury, spinal injury,

and you know, once you get a shoulder injury rehab to the point where you can start doing the

stroke properly again, swimming is one of the better things you can do for many, many types of

injuries. And of course, as I said, you know, good for the immune system and good for the nerve

system as well. What about lung capacity and cardio? Well, I've always found like, I mean, it's,

like obviously there's no real hills in swimming. So I've always been able to get my heart rate up

a little higher, you know, going up mountains and hills on either on foot or on my bike.

So in, you know, swimming fitness doesn't really translate into cycling fitness or running fitness

that well. But it's just a different way of working your cardio system because I mean, obviously

your horizontal, you know, worth on your bike or when you're on foot, you're upright.

And most of it comes from your arms. So even the best swimmers, you're just not going to quite get

the same, it's a different feeling. I mean, you can work exceptionally hard to, you know,

get your heart rate up exceptionally high, but it's just a little different

when you're aiming for speed work or, you know, racing and that sort of thing in swimming.

You know, my competitive days are mostly in the past, but and most of my swimming now is,

you know, I do speed work in the pool and I do speed work around boylines, but most of the time

I'm working hard, but not, you know, really hammering unless I'm in a 10k race or something like that,

because most of my adventure marathon swims, I'm aiming to challenge myself, but also making sure I've

taken the time to really, you know, soak up the scenery, so to speak. Like two or three times in

a milford sound, I just had to stop flying my back and just look around and just appreciate what

nature had in front of me. We're in a race, in a race you're not going to do that, but in these

sorts of long distance swims that I do, I mean, it's still obviously an endurance challenge,

but, you know, working hard, but generally speaking, not hammering in these big ones.

You know, I do that in training sometimes, but when I go on these ventures, it's,

yeah, I would meet personally, I definitely find climbing up a mountain harder than marathon swimming.

You know, it's harder cardio, at least for me, but it's still extremely challenging in a

different way. You must have a very efficient smooth stroke. Yeah, I mean, I like to think so.

It's, you know, it's one of, I mean, I wasn't natural at it. It took me along, I would say,

a good four or five, six months. When I first started swimming to be able to do it well,

it didn't come naturally to me, but because I got into long distance things pretty early in my,

in my sporting endeavors, I, yeah, you learn to be smooth and efficient, and it is one of those

things you can only become more efficient by doing it. So, yeah, I mean, it's very efficient,

and I breathe to both sides, like I'll either breathe every third stroke or fifth stroke, so it's

symmetrical, because if you only breathe to the one side, you know, you can develop an imbalance,

which obviously you're free. So, yeah. So, you have to choose an odd number of strokes for your

breath, so you alternate. Yeah, if you're going hard, you'll have to probably breathe every three

strokes, but when I'm in a rhythm, I'll often breathe every five, except for when you look up to

make sure you're swimming in a straight line. So, that happens every 20 or 30 strokes. Yeah.

Well, swimming in a straight line is tough. I think water is disorienting to start with. Limited

visibility, you have the water pushing you around, and in a pool, at least you have the line

on the bottom to help you, you know, keep you in your lane, so to speak, but how do you navigate

so you're in a straight line? Well, it's, I mean, if there's not much, if there's no wind or no

currents going on, it's, it is easier, and you pick a, you pick a point, you know, you know,

if you can see the other side of the lake or something like that, you just pick a point and you say,

right, I'm swimming towards that, and you know, you basically every 20 or 30 strokes, or maybe a bit

less than that sometimes, depending on what the weather's doing, you look up and make sure you're still

heading towards it. Now, if you've got tides to deal with, or if you have, you know, winds like

whether it's a headwind, it's harder when it's a crosswind, but it takes a lot of experience,

and I just, like I said, the only natural athletic ability I seem to have is to be able to swim in a

straight line, and navigating and knowing, you know, being able to judge, you know, if I've got a

crosswind, for example, and you got to swim, you know, just say to your right, somewhat in order to

go straight, that's one of the very few things that came naturally to me, athletically, I just

figured out how to navigate. This is how far I need to push to the right in order to keep going

straight when the wind's coming to me. And of course, in the ocean, when you got to, when it's

surf conditions, it's harder, but yeah, I seem to be able to navigate surf reasonably well.

I mean, sometimes when the waves hit, you are going to be pushed to the side, but you quickly

self-correct. And then, of course, there's rivers, where, you know, when you have to switch

directions, and you have to dodge rocks, and you have to, you know, dodge swim around islands,

that sort of thing, and you have to go through rapids, so that's a different beast altogether.

I mean, and the name of your first book, by the way, it's Down River Nomad, so I want to talk

about swimming rivers. Let's get through a few more of the big swim events that you've done.

Western Brook Pond, in Canada, and you were saying that they call it a pond, but it's actually

the biggest freshwater fjord. Yeah, we're from a Newfoundland, we call the big lakes the ponds,

it doesn't make much sense, but that's what we call them. So Western Brook Pond, or, you know,

to make it easier, Western Brook fjord, it's almost exactly a measure, it's actually about 200 meters

longer than Milford Sound. When I finished Milford, I hadn't been home for a fair while, and when I

finished Milford, I thought to myself, there's a fjord, you know, 90 minutes from where I grew up,

that when I was swimming and being competitive there, and I never thought of swimming it,

like I was more of a competitor when I was a teenager and 20-year-old growing up in Newfoundland,

and I wasn't doing as much adventure stuff, you know, so, you know, long distance triathlon for

the most part, as well as marathon swimming, but I got out of Milford within several minutes,

I thought, I got to get back to Newfoundland, and swim Western Brook Pond. And this was 2022,

when I swam Milford Sound, and just several months later, I found a lump on my foot, which turned

out to be cancerous. So, my plan of swimming Western Brook Pond in 2023 went out the window,

because it was recovering from the pretty horrific foot surgery, and it was right on the bottom

of my left arch, and I thought initially that would be a relatively simple thing to remove,

but because it was attached to my skin, they actually had to take skin off my forearm,

if you don't know if you can see that funny looking scurro there. Basically, they had to dig right

down, take all the flesh off my left forearm, and slap it on the bottom of my foot. So, I have hair

on my forearms, and so now I actually have hair on the bottom of my left forearm, and some of my

North American friends, they said, oh, you're a hobbit now, because I live in New Zealand,

and I had to correct them. I said, no, no, hobbits have hair on the top of both feet.

I had hair on the bottom of one. So, basically, it took me about several months to recover from

that surgery, had to learn to walk again in yoga, and then when the wound sealed, swimming was

you know, my important rehab, but because they more or less had to take this skin off my arm,

I thought that I might be able to swim both Western Brook Pond, and my other big goal was

Lake Pukekki, several months before I swam Milford Sound 28K Lake, about halfway down the center

of South Island, about a three hour drive from here. I tried to swim that a few months before

Milford, but I got 21 of 28K across, but the weather turned on me. So I said, right, we'll try

again next year. I was laid up with cancer. I missed the 2023 summer season, because the summer

is, you know, basically December through to April here, and I had my surgery in January, so I didn't

do anything swimming-wise in 2023 during the summer season, and then in 2024, I wanted to

swim Lake Pukekki, and I thought I'd go to Milford, sorry, Western Brook Pond, but I realized

after I swam another lake, called Lake College, which takes me about four or five hours to swim,

that was my limit, because my arm was still too damaged. I had my arm taped up and I had

neoprene wrist braces on my arm, and I realized if I swam another stroke after that, my arm would

get badly injured. So 2024, I did swim, and I did do a lot of things, but the longest I swam

there was this particular lake called Lake College, which took me about four and a half, I think,

was four hours, 45, if I remember correctly. And so finally this year, 2025, in April I swam

the 28K Lake Pukekki. I caught the best possible day you could possibly imagine where this

ice-blue glacier lake was like a mirror, and look at that, this is the universe apologizing to me

for the delay or something like that. I mean Lake Pukekki can get pretty rough, it's a big lake,

and when the winds pick up as they often do in New Zealand, it can look like a mirror in the

morning, but two, three hours into the day, it's often pretty rough, but I had the best possible

imaginable day, April 5th of this year, where the lake was like an absolute blue mirror,

and that took me eight and a half hours, eight hours, 24, and I finally finished it, and there

were some people milling about, there's a lookout point where I finished, and my kayakers,

you know, they paddled in, and I had a support car driver because there's a road next to one side

of the lake, and they told the few people milling about at this lookout point what I was up to because

they all saw me coming, and I was sitting down on this rock, I mean, I was finished, like I was

absolutely cooked, and I sat down on this rock, and this old lady who looked to be about 90 years

old, and she was nearly as big as a puppy, she came up to me and put her hand on my shoulder,

and she said, my goodness, swimming from the other side of the lake, that must have taken almost

an hour. Despite being absolutely fatigued, I just burst out laughing because it did take,

it did take more than an hour, it took eight and a half of them. But yeah, so I finally achieved

that goal in April, and then I moved on in August, I went home to Newfoundland, just as I was turning

50, I turned 50 a few days after I've successfully swam west from Brook Pond, and it's this isolated

fjord about 90-minute drive from where I grew up, so as I said, I never thought of swimming it when

I was young, and in my athletic prime, so my master genius plan was to wait till I turned 50, and

then travel to the other side of the world, then go swimming. It wasn't the most efficient way of

doing it when you think about it, but it's a pretty isolated fjord. You got to walk, I believe it's

about a three or four kilometer walk to get in there, and we pulled the kayaks in the night before

on a quad bike, but yeah, there's a tour boat that goes in there, and it was quite a difficult

task to get permission to swim the fjord, like when I asked permission from what's called the

Department of Conservation Doc in New Zealand, I sent the guy to email with my plan and my safety

plan and my pledge, I wouldn't do it in bad weather, and he called me back about three hours later,

we discussed for a couple minutes, he goes, yep, you got your permission, he sent me a letter,

go for your life, it wasn't quite as efficient in Canada, it was back and forth, back and forth,

and literally right up until the day before they were throwing roadblocks there,

you know, I'd sent a few days before I flew there to Canada from New Zealand, I'd sent a post

out on the Newfoundland kayaking Facebook page saying, look, I've got a couple of kayakers,

but it's just anyone who wants to kayak with me, I mean, I'd welcome more support, and all

that sort of stuff, and someone from Parks Canada got wind of that post, and when I landed in

San Francisco, I just happened to open my email, you know, I'm halfway to Canada, and they sent me

an email saying, you've now made this a public event by asking for help publicly, you need a five

dollar insurance policy, and I was like, what, you know, I thought I'd blew it, and anyway,

this two-page letter that sounded pretty threatening, and I thought to myself, man, if I'd posted

saying something like, I want to sell drugs or something in the national park, I would have been

just as threatened by Parks Canada, and anyway, the last two lines are saying, if you remove

the post and publicly say, you say, we don't, I don't need extra help, then you can go ahead and swim,

I was like, whoo, and I did that, and anyway, but it was, it's kind of just stuff, it's super

plexing, I mean, for a novice like me, I would think, you just go jump in the water and swim, you know

what I mean? Well, this, as I said, it's in a national park called Grossmore National

Park in Newfoundland, it's a really, really beautiful place, and anyway, the day before my swim,

they sent me a letter saying, because we were going into the fjord, which was the direction the

wind was forecast to be blowing, and I was going to get these, the shuttle boat, which drops hikers

off at the end of the fjord, they sent me a message saying, no, you can't do it, because by putting

the kayaks on the shuttle boat, you might damage the shuttle boat, and this was at five o'clock

in the afternoon, the day before my swim, and I've got a friend who's a very successful businessman,

he's one of the top, one of the great, you know, great guys, he really helped with the local

triathlon and cross-country ski trails there, I called him and I said, do you know anyone up there

who can just, you know, get them to back off, and he said, give me 10 minutes, he called me back

in eight minutes, he said, you're good to go, I solved this problem. Wow. So yeah, he basically

was the one, his name is Bill Barry, he was the one who got me over the line to be able to finally

swim western brook, and yeah, 16 kilometers plus 200 meters, and had two friends who were kayaking

in with me, and the tour boat passed me two or three times, and just as I finished, the tour boat

came up another time, right at the end of the fjord, and this is a really, really isolated place,

and I was on this small jetty where they drop off hikers, and the tour boat, I heard the tour boat

operator with his newfound land accent, weight thicker than mine, he was talking to the tourists,

and he said, see that guy on the, on the wharf over there, fellas, not one word of a lie, he swam

all the way in here, first person to ever do that, I guess he thought the tour boat was too expensive.

So yeah, that's fine. And western brook pond is, you know, as I said, it's the really large

freshwater fjord, and that was, that rivaled Milford Sound and Beauty, so that was really,

and that's in the Mesco World Heritage site as well, so it's really, really stoked to finally get

that one done.

You know, I want to rewind just a little bit, you said you had the cancer, and all the time and

energy and work it took to come back from that, but I think a lot of people would just get knocked

down and say, okay, I guess I'm not doing this anymore, but you came back. How did it feel when you

when you did finish the swim, and you're like, okay, I'm back.

Yeah, well, I don't remember this because I was coming out of anesthesia,

but my wife told me that when I was kind of, when I was being wheeled to the recovery room,

and I was, yeah, I was talking to the people who were, I have no memory of this because I was,

you know, still with anesthesia, I said to apparently the people who were wheeling me back, I was

talking incessantly about triathlon and marathon swimming, and I said, right, give me a year,

I'm going to swim like Pukekki, and I'm going to get up Avalanche Peak again, and Avalanche

Peak is one of the iconic mountains, about a two hour drive from here in a place called Earth,

there's Pass National Park, and it was four days shy of a year, I made it up,

made it up Avalanche Peak, and it took longer to swim like Pukekki because, as I said,

my arm was so badly damaged, with skin transplant, I did make it across like Colourage

that season, but it took me well basically a year and a half, and I got like Pukekki done,

and when I finished this fjord swim in Canada in August, it was just like, wow, yeah, I'm going to,

I'm going to write another book about this, and you know, I took a swing at writing a book,

after I swam what's called the Clotha River, and that was documenting my

marathon swimming adventures and triathlon adventures around the world, culminating with the

256 kilometer Clotha River swim, which took four and a half days, and that was my lockdown project,

because I decided on the second day of lockdown when I realized they weren't kidding.

Well, I always wanted to write a book, my mom's an English teacher, I love writing, I love reading,

I love reading adventure biographies, and my barrier to doing that before was,

you know, well, I'm not a super adventurer, and you know, the only people who know me are people

who've met me, who would read about me, but I realized with marathon swimming and triathlon,

you know, I was never the best one in the world or anything, I'm doing this because I love to,

and I want to, and I always wanted to write a book, so why not? So I thought I'd write another one,

and what I'm hoping to capture in the book coming back to your question is,

you know, how it felt to, you know, have that, you know, it was a life-threatening cancer,

I mean, it had it spread, they said that would have been it, but I just had the attitude as best

I could, that one of the first things I did when I recovered from when I got out of the hospital was,

you know, basically saying, right, this sucks, what can I do to make this worse? And I made a list

of things that I could do to make it incredibly worse and harder for my wife and harder for everyone

around me, and I decided very clearly not to do all those things, and, you know, basically, it was,

you know, I was doing all the, you know, I had my left arm and my left leg, my left foot torn up,

so I was doing all the movements that I could as early as possible, and then,

you know, it was mostly yoga first, because I mean, the wounds, I couldn't get in the water,

because I was, you know, I had the wounds and stitches and everything. I was mostly yoga that I was

doing, and when possible, I got on my wind trainer, I remember the first time I got on my wind trainer,

I did a 10-minute ride before my foot swelled up too much, so they couldn't ride anymore,

and that 10-minute bike ride on my, in my garage, you know, that was, that felt amazing,

even though it was 10 minutes, and my foot hurt so much, you know, that I could manage 10 minutes,

and then when I finished Prokeki, and, you know, I was sitting there exhausted, that little old lady came

up to me, and I laughed, and then I thought about it some more, and I thought, you know, wow,

you know, I'm not going to send any marathon swimming world records, or triathlon world records,

or anything like that, and there's certainly people a lot, you know, tougher than faster than me,

but what I'm hoping to capture in writing about my thing is capture what I've come to phrase is

like a mode of being, where, you know, you have a challenge, you have a, I guess you could use the

word catastrophe, and what you do in the face of that, and, you know, and sure there's appropriate

amounts of, you know, tons of frustration, and all that sort of thing, but he just never let that

get the better of you, and keep going, no matter what, and that's what I'm hoping to capture in this book,

that I'm, you know, it's probably going to take me all this coming year to finish writing,

and that sort of thing I've started, but I don't have a lockdown to do a lot of the work,

and I work full-time, and I do a lot of adventuring, so, you know, it's not as many hours per week

writing, but however long it takes, we'll see, we'll see.

Well, congratulations, and I love the example, getting after it, saying, okay, I've got to figure

out how to get back on the horse again, you know, I believe that that really is the way,

that it's the right attitude to get through life, because everybody gets hit with unexpected

things, it may not be cancer, it could be any number of things, but we always end up with

challenges and things we have to overcome that we wouldn't choose. Yeah, absolutely.

Your example's fantastic, you know, it's like, okay, I'm back at it, I'm just going to make this

happen, and you did, so congratulations on that. You know, we've almost burned up all of our time,

but I want to hear about the Buller River Gorge, and the cow, the cow that out, did you,

what are we talking about? Well, there's, in the lead-up to swimming the clothe,

like there's a handful of rivers in New Zealand that are deep enough for swimming,

and the Buller River is one of them, like most of the rivers in New Zealand are just too shallow

for swimming, I mean, you know, it's not a swimming place, but the Buller River, which the first time

I saw it was just after finishing a backcountry mountain bike ride called the Old Ghost Road,

which is incredible, and the shuttle getting bringing me back from the end of the

Ghost Road back to where my car was, you go through the Buller River Gorge, and that was the first

time I saw the Buller River, and I said, okay, I'm going to swim there, and basically the first time

I swam it, I didn't know all the kayakers that I know now, and I had the kayaking tour company,

in a small town called Merchantson, which is on the Buller River, I said, right, what I want to do

is I want, you know, to have a kayak tour guide come with me, but I don't want to use a kayak,

and they're like, yeah, sure, okay, and they thought, you know, with my accent, I was the

dumbest tourist who ever called, but told them, told them when I was up to, and basically what we

determined was just around Merchantson, there's a few waterfalls and that sort of things, you can't

swim there, and the end of the river where it meets the open ocean in a town called Westport,

there's a bunch of farms, and I was advised that the water was, with the farm runoff, probably

you get sick, assuming that, so the Buller River Gorge is very coincidentally 42 kilometers long,

marathon, and so I said, right, I'll swim that section from, you know, beginning to the end of

the gorge, and I did that successfully the first time when the water level was recently

low and that took about seven hours, the second time I did it, the water level was quite high,

and it took me about five and a half hours, and the second time I did it, a local journalist in

Westport, and this is population, I believe it's around 4,000, maybe 5,000 people live in Westport,

so you know, relatively small town, and a local journalist in Westport got wind of, you know,

what I'd done, and she called me and said, you know, kind of write a little story about this,

and I said yes, and you know, I told her all the things, you know, I didn't swim above

merchants, and because there's too many rocks, and there's waterfalls, so, you know, I declared

that unswimable, and I said, no, I wouldn't swim below the gorge because of the farm runoff,

I didn't want to get sick, and you know, she wrote a little story about me swimming the Buller

River Gorge twice, and at that time a friend of mine has since swam it, but at that time I was

the only person who'd done it, and less than two weeks later I just came up on my Facebook feed,

funny how the algorithm works, but the same journalist wrote an article they found a cow

at the in the mouth of the river, and they fished the cow out of it, and by its tags that they had

on, you know, the brand or whatever it is, they worked out that the cow had fallen in the river

from a field about 80 kilometers above merchants, and so the cow basically

drifted down the whole river right to the mouth, and went over waterfalls, and a vet had examined

the cow and said it was fine, so a cow did what I said couldn't be done, and so at the time I was

the only marathon swimmer in the world to have swam the Buller River Gorge, and I may still be

the only marathon swimmer in the world who's been beaten by a cow. You know, if a cow had to do it

again, it may not turn out so well for it, I think that's hilarious though, I tell you animals

will do things that seem ridiculous and get away with it somehow, I think they're just tough,

some of them, they're just tough, and I imagine a lot of cattle have died not trying, but

died in similar circumstances. I'm sure they have, but yeah, it was literally the same

journal as less than two weeks later after I'd said to this journal specifically what the cow

did couldn't be done. Well, that's a fun place to wrap this up. What's on the horizon for you?

What are you looking forward to now? Well, after my western rip-pons, one of my four days later,

I've swam the Humber River, which is roughly the size of the upper clue of those, about

close to 40 kilometers long. That's the river that swims that goes through my hometown. I swam

that four days after, and very shortly after finishing those swims, I figured out how to injure my

shoulder. I was helping my kayaker get the kayak out of the water, and I literally tripped on a

very, very small piece of wood on the jetty, and I injure my shoulder. So, September of this year,

I was rehabbing. I didn't injure my shoulder during this swim. I figured out how to do it five minutes

after. Right. So, October was not the greatest training. I mean, I had a lot of trouble getting back

in shape, but there's what I'm going to do this year. I'm doing some big bike rides, as well as

backcountry swims. I'm going to swim that Lake Halle Ridge again, and my main thing that I've got in

mind, there's a funny looking peninsula just near Christchurch called the Banks Peninsula,

and there's several little bays along that, and I'm going to swim from what's called Okane's Bay

through to La Bons Bay. So, basically, swim out to the open ocean through a harbor out around

this peninsula, which is basically a bunch of cliffs, and then swim back down into La Bons Bay,

and that crudely measured on Google Maps looks to be 16 or 17k, and I'm going to do another river

swim, and really locally, I haven't done this yet, where the Y-Mac river, that's the river they

use in the coast to coast for the kayaking section. I have swam that gorge, as well. Big sections

that river are too shallow for swimming, but near the end, several kilometers, where it goes into

the ocean just a little bit of north of Christchurch. I'm going to swim the end of that river,

and then enter the ocean, and then swim down to the end of the beach in a little section of Christchurch

called Sumner, and that looks to be about 25k, including a few k in the river, so transfer from river

down into the ocean, so that's one of the goals I have, as well, and I'm cooking up some back

country stuff, like, you know, combining, pulling a raft with all my hiking gear, going into the

backcountry, and things like that, I did one of those adventures in March, as well. I swam a lake

12k, hiked up a big mountain, and hiked back down over four days, and then swam the seven-and-a-half

k lake, and that was in Nelson Lakes National Park, and Mount Angeles was the mountain I hiked up,

so I called that the Marathon Swimming Mount Angeles Sandwich, so I'm interested in combining

Marathon Swimming with the mountains, because I love swimming, but I also love the mountains,

so combining too, is some of the other adventures that I've got in mind like that. Rob, that is so fun.

I think it's fantastic when people kind of come up with their own thing, they know they love it,

and they do it, and there aren't a lot of people doing what you're doing, you know?

Yeah, I mean, there's swimmers, but towing a raft behind you so you can camp and climb a mountain,

and swim back out again, that's unique. That's very, very cool. Well, thank you for your time

today, Rob. It was fun to hear what you're up to, and congratulations again on beating the cancer

and coming back and continuing to live an adventurous life. Thank you so much, and I really appreciate

you having me on. Oh, yeah, it's been fun. So all you listeners out there, as always, make sure you

get out there and have your own fun.