Caitlin O’Reilly: word’s youngest Ocean Seven swimmer

An ultra-marathon swimmer from New Zealand has got herself in the Guinness World Records after becoming the world’s youngest person to complete the seven big channel swims, known as the Oceans Seven. Words by Dave Crampton

A young ultra-marathon swimmer from New Zealand has got herself in the Guinness World Records after becoming the world’s youngest person to complete the seven big channel swims, known as the Oceans Seven.

Caitlin O’Reilly, at 20 years and 227 days, completed her final swim, the 42.5km Moloka’i Channel in Hawaii, in November, in 13 hours and 18 minutes. It was the toughest and longest of O’Reilly’s seven swims, with shark shields to keep sharks at bay. At one point O’Reilly was tracking to be the fastest female to ever swim the gruelling channel. But seasickness kicked in after four hours.

“I was seasick for nearly 10 hours, I spent the time throwing up three times every half an hour, while just trying to just keep going, to keep swimming,” she said.

For the first time in her campaign, she was also stung by jellyfish, which wrapped themselves around her body.

“They were so painful,” she said. “I got stung right across my chest; it was not pleasant.”

It was O’Reilly’s third attempt at the Moloka’i Channel, also known as “the Channel of bones” in her endeavour to be the world’s youngest person to complete the Oceans Seven. Last year she abandoned the crossing after 16 hours and 37 kms, after suffering chronic fatigue due to seasickness.

This time she made it through the seasickness, despite regularly throwing up.

“It’s all kind of sinking in. It’s relief as well, but I’m pretty knackered, pretty beat up,” O’Reilly said after that final swim. “This journey started for me in 2017 and is finally done now in 2024 and it does not feel real.”

It was in 2017 when, aged only 12, O’Reilly completed her first big Oceans Seven swim. She became the world’s youngest female to swim the 23km Cook Strait between the North and South Islands of New Zealand. Last year she became the youngest female to swim the 43.2km North Channel, from Northern Ireland to Scotland.

The Oceans Seven was first proposed by Steven Munatones of the World Open Water Swimming Association and devised in 2008 as the swimming equivalent of the Seven Summits mountaineering challenge. The seven swims are the 36.2km Strait of Gibraltar, the North Channel, the Cook Strait, Japan’s 41km Tsugaru Strait, the 33km English Channel, the 32km Catalina Channel, about 22kms from Los Angeles, and the Moloka’i Channel. They are the world’s largest and most difficult channels.

Only O’Reilly has completed five of the seven ocean swims as a teenager. The previous youngest female to do all seven was Croatian Dina Levacic, 27, when she completed the Cook Strait last year. The youngest male to do so is 23. Just eight other women have completed all seven.

“Individually these swims are incredible to complete, but to be one of the few who have completed them all is monumental,” O’Reilly’s guide and mentor Phillip Rush said. “It’s an amazing achievement from an amazing young athlete.”

Rush should know. He is a former marathon swimmer. He has swum the English Channel 10 times and has the world record for the fastest two- and three-way swims of it. He was also the first person to swim a double crossing of Cook Strait.

So, he also knows what it is like to swim in the dark, and it is that night-time swimming during the Cook Strait swim which set O’Reilly up for longer distances.

“Nobody had actually told me that Caitlin was scared of the dark,” Rush told New Zealand publication Newsroom. “Let’s rephrase that,” O’Reilly retorted. “I’m not scared of the dark – but then it was my very first time where I was swimming in the dark. Quite different.”

In her home country, O’Reilly, at 14, is the youngest female to swim 41km across Lake Taupō, New Zealand’s biggest lake. At 17, she became the third person to swim a double crossing, a total distance of 80.4kms. During that swim, she raised more than $7000 for Westpac Rescue Helicopter, which provides a world-class air ambulance and rescue service.

At 16, she was the second youngest to swim Foveaux Strait, between the South and Stewart Islands in New Zealand, spanning 26.9km. These swims, along with the Cook Strait, are known as the Triple Crown. O’Reilly is the youngest to do all three, completing them during Covid-19 restrictions when she was unable to travel to compete offshore.

One particularly memorable moment of O’Reilly’s seven swims was the sun rising during the Catalina Channel crossing last year. “Starting the swim at midnight to avoid the strong afternoon winds of LA, I was greeted by a massive pod of dolphins swimming alongside me as the sun rose,” she said. It boosted her spirits, knowing she had two hours to go, and the toughest part of that swim was over.