Torpedo Swimtalk Podcast with Ocean Swimmer and Marine Biologist Jeff Miller

On today's Torpedo Swimtalk Podcast we chat to open water marathon swimmer Jeff Miller, who lives, works and swim on the island of St.John in the US Virgin Islands. Our conversation dives into the heart of open water swimming, where Jeff's background in marine biology informs not only his strokes but also his profound respect for the aquatic life he encounters.

Inspired by the beautiful waters of the Caribbean at his doorstep, Jeff has completed two marathon swims no one has ever accomplished before - the Sir Francis Drake Channel and a circumnavigation of St.John Island.  He shares the unique challenges and highlights of these adventures, illustrating the intricate blend of physical stamina and mental strategy required to conquer such a challenge.

With no pools on St.John, Jeff does all his training in the ocean, detailing for us his  'swim hiking' around the island. His innovative techniques, from pre-placed hydration stations to adapting current models for navigation, offer a treasure trove of knowledge for anyone drawn to the call of the sea.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Hello Swimmers and welcome to another episode of Torpedo Swim Talk podcast. I'm your host, danielle Spearling, and each week we chat to a master swimmer from around the world about their swimming journey. On today's podcast, we're chatting to open water swimmer Jeff Miller, who lives and swims in the stunning Caribbean waters around the island of St John in the US Virgin Islands. Jeff has conquered some of the open water swims no one else has ever swum, as well as painting a vivid picture for us of the beautiful environments he swims in, and I loved hearing about the innovative training swims he's designed for himself. Let's hear from Jeff now. Hi, jeff, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:53

Thank you very much, Danielle. It's very nice to meet you.

Speaker 1: 0:55

Yeah, lovely to meet you too. Now you live and work in a very beautiful part of the world, in the US Virgin Islands. How does a guy from Ohio end up living in St John?

Speaker 2: 1:06

Well, it's quite a journey. It took me a while to get here. I went to university in Melbourne, florida, and learned, got my degrees in marine biology and biological oceanography and you can't study that real well in Ohio, so I kept moving south, ended up in the Cayman Islands for four years doing work as a dive instructor and a dive master, and I did volunteer work with the natural resources department there it's called the mosquito research and control unit, and that got me into the Caribbean and from there I went to the Virgin Islands and spent a couple steps to get to here, but it's been a great journey.

Speaker 1: 1:49

It sounds amazing. What's the population of the island that you live on, St John?

Speaker 2: 1:54

St John and it's about 4,000 people at the last census.

Speaker 1: 1:59

Right, and what about across the whole of the US Virgin Islands? How many islands are there in the cluster?

Speaker 2: 2:05

Three main islands St Thomas, st John and St Croix. My wife and I lived on St Croix for about nine years. It and St Thomas have about 50,000 people on it. They're much bigger islands and St John has got about 4,000 people.

Speaker 1: 2:23

Oh, wow. And how do you get between the islands these days? Just with a boat or?

Speaker 2: 2:28

Yeah, I mean, there's car barges that take you back and forth between St John and St Thomas. There is boats that go back and forth between St Thomas and St Croix. It's about 40 miles. So sea planes and other small commuter planes work really well too.

Speaker 1: 2:47

Amazing. So now all of your swimming is done in the open water, but back in your youth you were a high school and college swimmer in the US. How did you find transitioning between pool swimming and open water swimming?

Speaker 2: 3:01

Yeah, it was sublime. I mean I started off like many year listeners. You know, my parents took me to an area club when I was six years old and I went for a tryout and communication wasn't so well back in the 60s and I didn't get the message. I was supposed to go to a swim school. So I kept going back to the same practice and I hung around with that club for 12 years and spent two years at university. But because I didn't go to swim school I developed some pretty bad habits and it's taken me a long time to unlearn those habits I developed as a kid but about 1991, I guess it was, I left the black line behind and with getting into diving and teaching diving and studying marine biology, I really feel like I'm more comfortable in the water than I am on land and it's just amazing going out into the open water every day or having the ability to do so.

Speaker 2: 4:03

I love it. I've occasionally gone back to a pool. It comes back to me. You know I can remember how to swim circles and do flip turns. But you know, and it's so wild. I remember as a young age group swimmer. You know those distance people. They were, you know you didn't. They ate different things and they were just a different bunch of people, right? And now it's like well, let's go out and swim a mile and a half or two miles, you know, and that's your set. It's a completely different mindset, and so much of it is, to what I get to look at and what I get to see. You know, it's an amazing environment, swimming in clear, warm tropical waters. I mean, that's what it's all about for me.

Speaker 1: 4:50

Yeah, and obviously your work as a marine biologist puts you in great stead to know what you're looking at as well.

Speaker 2: 4:58

Yeah, yeah, you know it. As I progressed through my marine science education and career and got more back into open water swimming, connecting those two, you know, seeing the habitats that I studied and mapped and learned to monitor, and now I would be swimming across those different habitats, like many pieces just really begin to fell in the place from, like the spatial nature of things, and it's spectacular, it's such a treat.

Speaker 1: 5:31

So give us, give us a few of your marine encounters like what's the, what's the scariest thing that you've come across out there?

Speaker 2: 5:38

Most of the encounters with marine life, you know, or if they're on the negative side, they're all defensive actions of the animal or the organism. You know you have to bump into a jellyfish to get stung. They don't chase you, right I mean? So that's a defensive action on their part. And you know the sharks, right I mean, yeah, I've seen my fair number of sharks and most of them are just fine to be swimming in the same ocean as I am. We go our separate ways, everything's good. The ones that do make me a little nervous, of course, are the ones that they're on the bottom and I'm on the surface and then they come straight up and you're like, okay, this one's, I've got its attention, you know, and we're we're looking at each other and that's an okay encounter. And then you know, it swims around a little bit and then it swims off. And that's when it gets a little weird, because now you don't see it anymore, but it certainly knows you there, you know. But it's not a problem, you know, the scariest thing is really the conditions is getting in currents or getting in waves or being out in a thunderstorm comes up or something. It's. Rarely have I felt threatened by any kind of marine life. Now, barracuda, they, they can be a little little on the aggressive side and they, they're kind of interesting because you never see them and then all of a sudden they're there and then you're like, oh, there's a barracuda and you keep swimming and then it's gone, you know, and then it's there again and you just kind of have to. You know, in my experience with it is is, you know, again, I'm bigger than they are. You don't usually pick on things bigger than your size, so, reasonably, why would it do that?

Speaker 2: 7:32

You know, these animals, they all survive by stealth, right, they sneak up on their prey. I mean I, I give talks and marine biology and stuff and I'm like, you know, try and grab a fish with your hand. You know you can't do it. They're exceptionally fast in the water. I mean they're really fast. So these animals grab other fish with their mouths. You know that's the way they eat. If they're gonna, if they're gonna eat you, you know you're gonna feel a bump and you'll go. You know what was that? Because they can't announce themselves and say, hey, you know, I'm a predator, I'm here, you know, and then, because that would make you know they wouldn't be able to eat their prey. That way their prey would then go away, right. So they attack by surprise and by stealth. So if you've seen it, it's already decided that it's just gonna visit you.

Speaker 1: 8:26

But that's reassuring.

Speaker 2: 8:28

Right, that's what I think about. And now your waters are completely different. You got those blue bells and those white pointers and you know, I'm not sure I'd have the same kind of kind of attitude there, but I would try my best. I really I really try and be in harmony with the animals that I'm swimming in and just to try to smell the spec.

Speaker 1: 8:49

Yeah, that's really interesting. Do you do most of your swimming by yourself in the open water?

Speaker 2: 8:56

I do, I do. I always use a float bag. I've got a great partnership with the new wave swim bag people and once I found that product I was like this is a game changer, because I put my phone in it and my wife can then track my phone. Because we actually get better cell reception offshore than we do on the land, because the island is so hilly and so mountainous and most of my swims are near shore. You know, I'm within 50 meters of shore, so it's not that big of a deal.

Speaker 2: 9:29

I may, you know, go across certain passages, but I generally swim early in the morning. The winds are always better, it's always calmer, there's always less people, always less boaters, less boat traffic. So I'll go up to maybe eight miles, you know, by myself, anything longer than that. Or if I'm away from shore, then my wife will come with me in a kayak or I'll get a support crew to come out with me. She's a tremendous support. I mean, you know I learned as a young kid my sisters would drive me to those those early five o'clock, five thirty AM swim practices, right, because I didn't have a driver's license. So already my family was pitching in and I was like gosh, you know you can't do this by yourself and even now you know the open water swimming. It takes a tremendous support crew behind yourself, and my wife and my friends have been tremendous supporters all along and I can't do it without them.

Speaker 1: 10:21

Yeah, oh yeah, it always it takes a village, doesn't it?

Speaker 2: 10:24

It does, it does and it's. It can be great fun for them, but it's also kind of taxing on them too, you know. So you're asking them to do something that's that's not necessarily easy.

Speaker 1: 10:36

Yeah, well, that leads me into my next question, because you, you, you mentioned in some emails that we've had between each other that you completed the 25 kilometer St Francis Drake Channel. So that's quite a swim, and obviously you would have had a support crew and I hope you know your wife was probably on the boat. It's a long time for them to to watch you swimming. Tell us about that swim and I know you were the first person to actually swim it what brought that about?

Speaker 2: 11:01

Yeah, the Sir Francis Drake Channel is the, the channel that separates the islands of the British Virgin Islands. There's the main island of Tortola and then the outer islands, there's Norman, Peter, Saul, Cooper, Jinder Islands that are separated by this channel, and then the. The far end of the channel is Virgin Gorda and at our end of the channel, the US end of the channel, is St John, and I would do a lot of my work at a site that looked straight up that channel. You know, we could see straight up there and there was Virgin Gorda in the distance and it's just like, oh man, that would be interesting. You know, 15 and a half miles, it's what that's, that's 35 or so kilometers, I guess, and and 37 and and that would be an interesting swim. So it just kind of is a sea that's planted it. It just kept going around in my mind and finally was like all right, let's, let's take this seriously. I'm not getting any younger. It's time to either decide we're going to do this and seriously, you know, try and figure it out or or, or or not. And when you're doing something nobody's ever done before, there's nobody really tell you how to do it right. So what are the currents. No, you know, you know, and it's amazing.

Speaker 2: 12:24

I found a website that had a current model that covered that area is out of the University of Puerto Rico and the current goes against the wind. The wind is primarily in my direction, from Virgin Gorda to St John, east to west, southeast wind, but the current often goes against the wind and it is extremely variable based on the moon and the stars and the tides. So this website was really really important to help understand how I would plan this one. It only updated 24 to 36 hours in advance, so I was like that's going to make it kind of difficult. When I got my weather window, how do I know if tomorrow well, if Thursday or Friday or whenever you know days away is the day, how do I know what the currents are going to be? I don't know. So I'd have to know only a day in advance and then figure it out. So what I did was like a month before every day, I would look at this website and I'd say, okay, if the swim was tomorrow, how would I do it? I had pages for each day and I'd map out how I would handle the currents that were forecast for the next day. Then the following day, I'd say, okay if the day after tomorrow I'm doing it, how would I do it? I kept doing this for over a month so that I could gain the confidence, saying, when my weather window happened, I would be able to look at the website and say, okay, here's the way we're going to do it, here's my eight to 10 hour expected time to take it, here's when we would leave, here's the path we would go and here's how we'd make the success. And it worked.

Speaker 2: 14:04

I had a great crew. I had my observer was the same guy who observed the around St John's swim. My wife and another friend of ours who was on that swim were my main team supporters. Then we invested in two people from Team River Runner, which is a wounded veterans group in the states that helps promote the recovery of veterans who've been wounded in conflict. One of their big premises is they want to get butts in boats. They want their veterans to start kayaking and whitewater rafting and being active.

Speaker 2: 14:42

I raised money for them with the swim around St John and I was like, okay, I want to do this again, but I want to also get their butts in my boat.

Speaker 2: 14:51

Let them help support me. I need kayakers because my wife came up with the support plan, which was we have a power boat and then we have a double kayak. The power boat is around the main support vessel and then the double kayak is with the swimmer. They have my feeds and the GPS and all the tracking equipment and some safety equipment. Then I would feed every 30 minutes and that all came by the kayak. If the kayak need to switch out, they would go to the power boat. The power boat will come by them and that's another double kayak would come in with another team. There was always a double kayak with me and somebody then could rest on the main boat. It works really great. We got to involve the team River Runner folks with that. It was so immensely satisfying to have those amazing people be part of my team. We were able to raise money for them and actually involve them in the swim, which they were thrilled to be a part of and had a great time.

Speaker 1: 16:01

Yeah, that's really excellent. I love the fact that you got them involved and hopefully they'll be along on some of your future swims as well.

Speaker 2: 16:08

That would be great. Yeah, that would be great. It's a tremendous group. They come here every summer to take part in an event that we have on the island. Back when I started doing these in 2016, they were one of the motivations behind it. I mean, there's an event called the Beach to Beach Power Swim that they helped design the course for. It's gone on for 25 years and these veterans would come down and they would participate in this event. It's either a one mile, two and a quarter or three and a half mile open ocean swim. It's a spectacular venue. 350 people can take place in it.

Speaker 2: 16:51

I watched it in 2014, and one of the veterans had no, he was an amputee from above his knees and he swam the three and a half miles. I was like this is absolutely incredible. If I can raise some money by doing some swims to bring more of these people down and let them participate in this activity, it would be great. It just would be so much fun. That's what got me partnering up with Team River Runner and it's been a great partnership. Ever since I got to mention, cancer has unfortunately been in my life, in my wife's lives. I also raised money for the St John Cancer Fund, which is a great organization here on the island, I get to do these crazy events. It gets the community behind us and we raise money for really good causes and it just feels so good. It's just a win, win, win, win, win all around.

Speaker 1: 17:54

Is there much of a swim community in St John and on the US Virgin Islands? You mentioned, obviously, the swim where you get 350 participants. Are there other people out there in the open water, maybe not swimming with you, but part of the open water community?

Speaker 2: 18:08

Yeah, it's not a large community. It picks up when that race comes around. St Thomas there is a I think it's a 25-meter pool there. In St Croix there's a couple 25 and maybe a 50-meter pool. They have very active swim clubs there. The Virgin Islands has set several people to the Olympics partake in those. There's some great open water events. There's a coral reef swim that takes place over in St Croix. It's a five-mile swim between an island called Buck Island and the Buccaneer Hotel, which is a blast. I've done that one a number of times. There's really serious bass swimmers that come to that, so that's a blast. So yeah, there's drips and drabs of open water swimming that takes place here in St John. It's picking up. There's more and more. I see more and more swim buoys around, which is great fun that more people are getting involved in.

Speaker 1: 19:08

And has that swim that you did in the channel being ratified now?

Speaker 2: 19:12

It's not. It's still pending. So fingers across. I believe we did everything necessary, so I'm fairly confident it will be. The crew is great. We read all the rules ahead of time and abide by an unassisted swim and it certainly was not current aided. We spent a lot of time going against the current, although I never thought I had a negative split of 15 and a half miles swim, the last half and certainly the last three miles were my fastest miles of the swim and it certainly wasn't because of technique I had fallen apart. So it was definitely with a little bit of a push from the wooden ways going our direction.

Speaker 1: 19:55

Yeah, it's very interesting the way those currents can assist and and hinder as well. So I'm sure at the beginning of your swim it was against you.

Speaker 2: 20:03

So it was. It was yeah, and you know it was fun, you don't. You don't necessarily know that. We knew there'd be. We hope we were skirted to the side of it enough, you know, and and we got out a little bit too much into the channel and and and got the direct head on currents. But you know, you just keep on swimming and keep on moving and it's kind of interesting when you. I swim in very shallow water and it's clear water, so you know I can see the bottom, and there I couldn't. So you kind of feel like you're on a treadmill and you don't know if you're really moving. There's, there's no references, and I know this is stuff you guys deal with all the time, right, Because you don't necessarily get to see a lot of stuff in the water. But yeah, I mean I'm spoiled, I mean what can I say? I mean I get to swim in clear, warm tropical waters. I mean why not?

Speaker 1: 20:55

Yeah, very nice. You know it's been a week down at the beach after Christmas and I just we we swim every day but it was pretty murky down there. It just really depends on the tides. There's a lot of seaweed around this year but other times, where I swim can be completely clear and you can see the bottom. But it just really depends, I suppose.

Speaker 2: 21:17

Yeah, you know, I, I I had to do some night swimming and it dawned on me then too that you know it's a big deal for me because I can't see. But this is what people deal with all the time when they can't see in the daytime, right, I mean dark night, when it's two feet of visibility, a foot of visibility, they. It doesn't matter whether it's day or night. Well, in me it does. I mean I can see. You know 50, 60, 80 feet down and and you know 30, 40 meters, you know on this village is good, I can see that far and that's that's why I swim is because I want to look and see what's there. You know I got prescription goggles and and it, you know it's. That's what it's about.

Speaker 1: 22:02

And one of your other big spills was you circumnavigated the island of St John, where you live. How far is that around?

Speaker 2: 22:08

It was given 22.9 miles, it wouldn't give me the extra tenth of a mile. So if that turns out to be 37 kilometers, there we go. So it's about 37 K around. Yeah, that was great. That was in 2016. And then that that was another big one in that nobody had done it. Lots of people said I couldn't do it, like, oh, nobody's ever kayaked around the island much less swim around in it.

Speaker 2: 22:33

So it's like okay, so we just broke it up into chunks. You know, in the training I could do all the segments and we could play with what the currents were gonna be right. So I do this four mile section and I do it when the tide is rising and then I go back and I do it another time when the tide is falling. And what's the difference? In my time, you know, over a four mile section, it's not gonna be a 22nd different, it's gonna be 10 or 15 minutes if I'm going against the tide or with the tide. So I developed a current model that you know, when the tides were certain places, were in certain ways in certain places, then it would be in a certain direction, and just tried to piece that together and then tried to work with my speed so that I would be able to work with that kind of movement. Right, if you take an island that's maybe nine or 10, 11 miles, 12 miles long, and the water's gonna move back and forth and you've gotta kind of be here when it's one area and around this side when it's going the other way, so that it's a neutral current and just so happens, my speed kind of works with that. So it turned out really, really good and it was amazing. You know, we had a same kind of. This is where my wife kind of put the crew idea together with using the two double kayaks in the power boat.

Speaker 2: 24:09

We went on a training swim one time and we were, I don't know, three or four kilometers offshore, going across this big bay, and it was. We had started at night and the sun was up now and it was just a double kayak and myself, a power boat was supposed to meet us and they were late and there was a shark swimming underneath us and we were like man, this just is not good. We need to think about this a little more. So, you know, there's a lot of discovery and that's what the training's about, you know, is you figure things out that you need to do better, and we certainly did. So. That's what I really enjoy the training part, the learning part, the daily part.

Speaker 2: 24:55

You know the how am I gonna set up my weeks? How am I gonna set up my months? How am I gonna train in order to swim 23 miles, 24, 25? You know, I don't know if I can stay where the currents want me to be. You know, maybe I'll have to swim longer. How long will it take? 11 hours to 16, 17, 18, I don't know. You know the longest my training swim was 14 miles. So I was like, okay, that's two thirds of it. You know what's gonna happen in the last third.

Speaker 2: 25:26

So for me the months that lead up to it is really. It's anxious. You know it's nerve-wracking, but it's fun and you know everybody thinks wow, they're really long swims. You know that took me almost 12 and a half hours. It was 12 hours, 19, but it's over and a half a day. You know you've been thinking about this thing for over a year. You know you've been training for it for months and it's over and a half a day. You know it's like boom, it's done. You know, and it's kind of interesting that way. You know that they actually finish up pretty quick when you think about all you've done to get ready for it.

Speaker 1: 26:10

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean it's a huge sense of achievement to do those two swims. I mean, how much training do you put in each week for something like that? Are you an everyday swimmer?

Speaker 2: 26:22

Yeah, you know, when I was focused on those events. It does become an everyday thing, you know, with the swimmer out saying, john, 23 miles or so. That was a serious task. I mean, yeah, I was younger then, but it, you know, we did some strength training first, you know, to kind of build up strength. My wife is a really great personal trainer. She's got a number of clients here on the island so she gets to help me with that. And you know there's a gym on the island now, but there really wasn't then. So we have a home gym here that we can do that with. And then, yeah, you swim every day.

Speaker 2: 27:00

I was still diving a lot then, so for me it was like I want to maintain a feel of the water. Right, it's not always faster, it's stronger, but it's almost mentally stronger than it is physically stronger. And your body gets to a point, I think, where you are physically strong enough and now it's time for your mind to be physically strong or mentally strong enough to drive the train. And to me that's what the swims are about. Okay, it's six o'clock, I got to get in an hour and a half swim before I go to work. I got to get out and do it, you know, and that's it's not necessarily the strength I'm going to gain by doing that hour and a half. It's the mental strength of saying I've committed to this, so I'm going to see that commitment through.

Speaker 2: 27:54

And I looked up some numbers. I was doing like 30 to 40 miles, like it's like 50 to 65 kilometers, in the months ahead of time. A couple of months before I bumped it up to 40 to 16 miles, so like 65 or 95 kilometers in a couple of months before the round, st John, and then the big one the month before. It was about 80 miles, so 130 kilometers in the month before. So it was I just, you know, just keep swimming, just, and I'm fortunate you know I'm not like people who are racing it that I have to be concerned for a time I just wanted to keep going, you know, and it was all about just keeping that diesel engine kind of running in that pace and it worked really well.

Speaker 2: 28:44

I would do a couple of training swims where it would be a seven or eight or there'd be longer ones, and I'd be coming in and you'd be feeling tired and done and you're like you know what, let's go down the beach and back and then finish Because I just want to go a little bit more. You know you're ready to stop. Your mind's been focusing on a descent now for the past hour, but there's going to come a point when you're out there where you're going to want to quit and you're going to say I'm done and you're going to have to tell your mind no, you're not done, you need to do, you need to get through this. So I would tack on another extra half a mile at the end, you know, just to say OK, keep going.

Speaker 2: 29:27

You know you thought you were done, not quite. Yet here you go. And you know I don't have a coach. These are all little games I get to play with myself. So it worked out. You know it worked. You know that training put me in a really good mindset to make it all happen.

Speaker 1: 29:47

Do you listen to the podcast on Apple or Spotify? If you do, we'd love you to write a review for us. It helps other swimmers find the podcast and we're all about spreading the word about the fantastic swimming journeys of the people we interview. Yeah, I can see how that would absolutely increase your sort of mental fortitude, because when you head into a swim that long, you would come across parts in it where you feel a bit down on yourself. You want to throw in the towel, go home, have a, put your feet up, have a coffee, whatever. So, building that up in your training, you get the time to practice that before you go into the swim.

Speaker 2: 30:31

I really, I see the training it's like rehearsals. You know they were rehearsals for the swimming and I didn't want to to experience something I would. I'd never experienced that length of swimming. I mean I would. I would do like an eight mile swim and then I'd followed up the next day with a 10 mile swim. You know, still not as far as I was going to go, but I just kept shortening the intervals in between. But I knew there'd be a time when you're like man, I am really tired. You know that's what happens when you do this. How are you going to deal with that? And it's going to be your mind as long as everything else checks out right. I mean, you do the self-check. You know my head's fine, my shoulders are fine, my neck, my back, you know everything's good, it's up here. It's like you got to keep the mind. You know, driving the bus and and I was really, I was really happy I did that.

Speaker 1: 31:26

Yeah, Now something I find really intriguing. You sent me a little video of some swim hiking that you did and where you put some drinks along the way. Can you, can you tell everyone about that, Because I think that's so innovative? I haven't ever seen that before.

Speaker 2: 31:39

Two thirds of St John is a national park, right? So there's no development in the national park there's there's no houses in it, you know. So there's no roads in a lot of the places and you can get to some really beautiful areas to swim by hiking trails. So again, with these, these swim bags, it was like, all right, I can put some food in the bag and then I can take bottles, you know, of what I want to drink, and I can hike in and swim. You know a route.

Speaker 2: 32:12

And because the marine section of St John, there's 5000 acres the water are Marine Park as well, so there's buoys that that designate swim zones and so, instead of dragging my nutrition, I can take two or three you know bottles of of my drink with me and I'll, I'll shake it up and I'll put, I'll freeze it and then I put it in these bottles. And then I clipped the bottles to a buoy line that I know I'm going to be swimming back by. So now I don't have to have it clipped onto my float bag and drag that through the water too. I can just swim back by the buoy that I have my bottle tied onto and and there's my nutrition break and important there is. I leave a little bit of air in the top of the bottle because that way it still floats on the line. It's submerged but it still floats and that way, no, no water has leaked into it, because it somehow salt water has leaked into it and now the bottle is all the way full.

Speaker 2: 33:13

I know that's probably not one I want to drink, you know, because it's the bottles leaked and it's gotten me. Not that that happened before, but yes, it did. And I learned that you leave a little air in the top there. So now you know that it isn't. It didn't leak, so it's great, you know it opens up. It opens up the island to just amazing swims, you know, and my wife has been completely supportive of these activities. But, man, I can route every weekend, you know if I can do these on my own and she can track me on the phone. And you know it's, I've got a buoy bag, I go early, I'm most of the time I'm near shore and if I'm not near shore, I go early enough that there's not a lot of boat traffic. It's great, you know it's, it's a ton of fun.

Speaker 1: 33:59

Yeah, it sounds really good. I'm just intrigued by that whole innovation. I think that's great. It's fantastic yeah.

Speaker 2: 34:08

I love the hike and swims. You know they're. They're great fun yeah.

Speaker 1: 34:13

Have you? Have you got any upcoming swims on the horizon that you're excited about?

Speaker 2: 34:17

Yeah, nothing, nothing real big and grand. There's a swim from Nevis to St Kitts, two islands a little further south down the Korean chain, I think. It's a two, two and a half mile swim, and at the end of April. That we've never done and that could be a fun one. There's a couple hundred people that do that, so we might try and look into seeing get down to that. We've got our power swim. That comes up in in May, the end of May each year, so we'll take a look at that. My wife and I have been doing a lot of biking too, so we'll we'll probably do some bike trips, but I'm going to keep swimming. I mean, finding your podcast and getting in touch with you has kind of put a spark in me here as well. So it's. It's been a lot of fun getting back out there while doing that. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 35:05

And look, just before I let you go, I wanted to ask you what's your most unforgettable experience that you've ever had in the water?

Speaker 2: 35:12

There's a couple of them that come to mind the swim around St John and the Drake Channel swim to, to commit to those to, to do something that nobody's done. You know, it's kind of fun and that's exciting. And, and, geez, I did a swim between Cayman Brack and Little Cayman in 19, 19, 19, 19, 18, 87. And that was another one nobody had done before and it's that was way back, you know, before GPS is on the internet and cell phone and and didn't know much of anything about open water swimming. But it's taking that leap of faith that you know, you think, you think it's going to work out and yeah, there are things that are scary, but go for it anyway. You know, and and give that a try. I have been fortunate enough to snorkel with humpback whales, which is just an extraordinary experience to be in the water with something that magnificent and it's actually on a dive, very briefly, for just like a minute and a half with a humpback whale.

Speaker 2: 36:26

And I vividly remember the humpback was here. You know this big pectoral fin and I was next to it and I could see its eye move and like look at me and I was like, oh my God, the whale just looked at me and then it swam up to the surface to breathe, which is bizarre because I'm the one that has to breathe on the surface and I was underwater in the whale and I'm now again distinctly remember going.

Speaker 2: 36:56

I'm looking at the underside of a whale which is the view not many people get to see, and I was like you want to remember this, because this doesn't happen very often. So those are charismatic. Megafauna is a great experience. Those are a couple that come to mind. Yeah, there is also.

Speaker 2: 37:18

I sent you a little video of the little jack that swims with us, you know, and that's that's another unbelievable experience. I swam 10 miles from from half of the island it was. It was like a stepping stone to the round island. Thing was this little jack was with me under my chest nearly the entire way, just swimming like a banshee, and it was amazing, it? You know? I could look down and like, oh, I don't see it, and I would like forget everything and keep swimming, and then like 20 minutes later, well, oh, there it is, and it's not a different one, it really is the same one, and I felt so bad that I had taken it from one side of the island to the other. I'm like his parents are going to wonder where it is.

Speaker 2: 38:10

You know, and you know someone with these tarpon that are just magnificent. You know they're, they're, they're the green sea turtles. You know that are daily experiences, you know, it's just, it's, it's like. You know, walk to the sidewalk, you walk your favorite route, you walk your favorite trail, you know your favorite flower and your favorite tree. That's what I get to do here in the water is I can swim my favorite course and see corals that I've known for decades. You know that I've watched grow and, sadly, in some cases I've watched die, and these are animals that are hundreds of years old. I mean, they're they. They started growing when Columbus sailed by, you know, and I get to see them on a daily basis. I get to get to know them and sometimes sadly watch them die and that's amazing. I mean, I don't take that for granted. Those are the kind of occurrences that keep me going in the water.

Speaker 1: 39:15

Well, I think you've painted a wonderful picture of the US Virgin Islands, so I wouldn't be surprised if you get some visitors coming along to check out the swimming.

Speaker 2: 39:24

Thank you very much. Yeah, it is. It's a big part of why I'm here and we enjoyed a lot. Thank you very much, yeah.

Speaker 1: 39:34

So before I let you go, I always ask all my guests their deep dive five, which is a bit of a snapshot of your swimming. So give us your different answers. I suppose because you're in a different location, but what is the favorite pool that you've ever swum in before?

Speaker 2: 39:49

Favorite pool, talked to my wife about this a lot. We went to Australia and my wife did the Australian Ironman there and we had friends in Sydney and they took us to a five pools swim run and this this was so amazing. You swim two laps down and back in this ocean pool and then you run to the other side of the bay and there's another pool and you jump in. You swim two laps in the pool and you run another bay and there's another pool and you swim. So you swim. He just dived in with his, his, his trainers on and you swim with his shoes and those are my favorite pools. They're absolutely amazing, they're ingenious and they don't have them here. So your Australian pools are just. I love it.

Speaker 1: 40:41

It was very yes, the ocean pools of New South Wales are beautiful. They really are.

Speaker 2: 40:46

I heard about your book you got for Christmas, so I'm going to look into that.

Speaker 1: 40:49

Yeah, well, it's got every, every pool listed there, so definitely the one. The one that you're talking about is the Coastal Walk, I think.

Speaker 2: 40:56

I don't, it was a lot of years ago, but it was just. It was Easter Sunday and we're running in soggy tennis shoes and our slug goes down the street, run into this next pool, just lapping so hard it was. It was tremendous. So we did one here like that, where we started a beach. You would swim out to a buoy and back and then you'd run to the next bay. You would swim out to a buoy and back and you'd run to the next bay. So we brought a little of that here and and just couldn't do it in pools.

Speaker 1: 41:25

Yeah, but you're doing it in another beautiful environment, so that's great and your favorite open water swimming locations.

Speaker 2: 41:32

Well, I do have to say here yeah, and we've discussed my thermal intolerance, so I'm kind of sucking. The tropics there could be some cool tropical adventures. There's some fun open water swimming is in Fiji that, if we can swing the cost, we may look into, but definitely I think the Virgin Islands is a top of the heap. The Caribbean is good swimming.

Speaker 1: 41:56

And what about your favorite freestyle training drill?

Speaker 2: 41:58

The training drills. I've got two. One of them is sculling, because I do sculling when I like to sneak up on fish. So like those tarpon that they're like in the morning, they're like right at the surface, I know they're there and I'm like, ok, I'm going to slow down here from the tarpon, so I'll work on my sculling drill and that allows me to kind of slowly sneak up on the tarpon and get to see him better that way. So that's kind of fun. And then the other one I'll do is a straight line drill between buoys where I'll just try and, you know, really focus on stroke and technique and say, ok, can I literally swim straight into that next buoy? You know, the waves are going this way, the currents doing this, the swell is OK, so I'm going to kind of adjust for all of that. Can I swim a straight line? And those are the two. We make it work. It's kind of fun.

Speaker 1: 42:49

I like that. I love the sound of that. You're really inventing things for your environment, which I think is perfect.

Speaker 2: 42:55

Yeah, and they're really functional. You know the straight line, you know you're swimming a couple of miles and you deviate by 100 meters, 200 meters. A minute and a half, three minutes, you know, adds to your time. Swimming straight is really key.

Speaker 1: 43:11

Absolutely. And what about your favorite little open water training set?

Speaker 2: 43:16

Yeah, the open water training set is.

Speaker 2: 43:19

Maybe we'll be able to post some videos, but I think the one is that beach to beach power swim, like it's a, do that three and a half miles and then I walk three and a half miles back to the car and it's a hilly walk. You'll get about 800 feet of climbing on that. And then I get in and I do the two and a quarter mile swim and then walk back to the car and then I do the one mile swim and then walk back. So it's like doing the beach to beach twice. So it's seven miles or so, but you also get the fitness and the keeping up your heart rate of walking at the same time.

Speaker 2: 43:53

And then when I was doing the direct channel training, I needed to swim a little longer. So I put another two miles swim at the end of that and you know it's a way to get in eight or nine hours of exercise where I'm not exposed to the water and the sun the whole time and it's it's an extreme of a set, but you know it's like a hike and swim. Those are, those are my favorite sets.

Speaker 1: 44:16

Yeah, do you carry your your running shoes in your in your floaty bag?

Speaker 2: 44:21

Yeah, I do, yeah, and I've got some really light shoes. That works out really great. So they fit in the bag and you know a cover up and you know a little nutrition bar and and we're good, and my phone and we're good to go.

Speaker 1: 44:35

Yeah, fantastic. And how about the swimmer you most admire?

Speaker 2: 44:41

I'm sisters. I had a mother with a really strong personality. I was the only boy in the family with me and my father, so I I love being involved in open water swimming, where the women are amazing. I mean, they're the leaders there, they're, they're doing unbelievable things and it in a way, it's my own tribute to my mom and my sisters and my wife and and that I was raised in an environment where, even in the 60s and the 70s, my sisters played baseball. You know they did the things that they want to do and my mom said, do what you want to do, you know, and that was early for that.

Speaker 2: 45:31

So I think Len Cox is the female swimmer that I really admire the most. I mean talking about doing things nobody else has ever done that. Aleutian Islands swim between the Aleutian Islands and Russia. You know, when she did that was just that redefines unbelievable, you know, and she believed it could be done is just absolutely. I just have a ton of regard. It gives me chills just thinking about, not because it's cold, but it's such a great event, just a great achievement. That is absolutely amazing. I corresponded a little bit with her when I was getting ready for some things and just amazing perspective and amazing accomplishment and amazing attitude. I really admire her.

Speaker 1: 46:18

Thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast, jeff. I think you've really lit up a whole other area of the world that I'm sure a lot of people haven't heard about, and it's great to hear that swimming and open water swimming is thriving there and you're obviously a big proponent of it.

Speaker 2: 46:34

Thank you very much. Thank you for letting me play with your deep dive. Bye, I enjoyed it.

Speaker 1: 46:39

You're welcome. Thank you, bye. I hope you enjoyed my chat with Jeff. Maybe that has opened up your eyes to swimming in a new part of the world that you may not have considered before. Till next time, happy swimming and bye for now.