Relatively few swimmers in the world have traveled to so many places to do so many marathon swims as Chris Palfrey. If it is not Chris in the water, it is his wife Penny Palfrey doing all kinds of channel swims, training swims, marathon swims, and open water races in Europe, the Caribbean, the South Pacific, the Americas, in Hawaii, or throughout Oceania.

So when he says, “Whitsundays is the best place in the world to swim,” it has got to be an especially magical place.

“I’ve swum in quite a lot of parts of the world, and the Whitsundays has the potential to be an open water mecca for swimmers. These are amongst the best conditions in the world.”

With a huge amount of potential for record-setters interested in doing the unprecedented in the open water swimming world.

“The great thing about Whitsunday at the moment is you’ve got 74 islands and probably only half a dozen of them have ever been swum,” explains Palfrey to the Guardian Newspaper in his native Australia. “And mainly it’s been us boys that have done it. In your lifetime how often do you get to do a swim that has never been done before by anyone in history?“

The Whitsunday Islands are a collection of continental islands of various sizes off the central coast of Queensland, situated between just south of Bowen and to the north of Mackay, some 900 kilometers (560 miles) north of Brisbane, Australia. The island group is centered on Whitsunday Island, while the group’s commercial center is Hamilton Island.

Palfrey completed a 14.5 km crossing between Hamilton Island and South Molle Island with two of his mates including Christie Leet. And there is much more to come, for both men and women, soloists and relays, one-way and two-way crossings.

Copyright © 2013 by World Open Water Swimming Association