Marine mayhem ends Palfrey's tilt at greatness

Zane Bojack - 

You need mental strength to undertake a task that caused immense emotional and physical pain the first time around. Marine stings forced marathon swimmer Penny Palfrey to pull out of her world record attempt in Hawaii earlier this year. Does lightning strike twice ?

Have you ever been stung by a jelly-fish?

What did you do at the time?

Jump out of the water?

Seek some vinegar, ask for medical assistance?

All of these thoughts went through the mind of North Queensland marathon swimmer Penny Palfrey as she attempted to become the first person to ever swim the 115 kilometre channel between the Hawaiian islands of Oahu and Kauai.

Planning a 30-hour swim, she struck trouble with jelly-fish only 90 minutes into her journey.

She stuck with it for another seven hours in the dark and choppy waters off Hawaii, but as the 48-year-old grandmother explains there is pain and then there's what she experienced as cloudy white tentacles kept wrapping around her body.

"At the moment I feel like I am just burning up, I am so covered in stings that I feel like a big hot beacon," Palfrey said from her hotel room in Honolulu.

"There were just such a massive amount of stings and toxins in my body, I was in so much pain.

"The first sting went down my right side and underneath my right arm, and once you get them under your arm then with every single stroke the stinging cells go again."

Writhing with pain, but still determined to continue her journey, the North Queenslander says she was trying to concentrate only on her swimming technique.

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