In September 2023, Yasemin Altintas (Turkey, @yaseminaltintas) and Murat Öz (42, Turkey, MSF bio here, @muratoz) completed a 32.3 km tandem swim across the Catalina Channel in Southern California in 13 hours 4 minutes.
Öz achieved the Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming with that crossing while Altintas would later achieved her Triple Crown in July 2024.
With another Cook Strait crossing, Öz is on his way to the Oceans Seven as is Altintas.
So they were both looking to nail down a 45 km Molokai Channel crossing between Molokai Island to Oahu in their tried-and-true tandem swim with their escort pilot Michael Twigg-Smith.
After a long wait for their swim window, they were immensely grateful when they finally started on Molokai at South Pāpōhaku Beach on May 17th at 6:36 pm.
Öz wrote before their start, “We’ve been in Hawaii for 20 days – much longer than we prepared, waiting for the weather to allow our swim. After facing the idea of returning without swimming and saying that this time it was not our fate, a window that can be floated between two storms has been opened. And we decided to evaluate the single-sided window together. Unless there is any mishap, we will have started from Molokai island in tandem side by side.”
The crossing was – as expected – not an easy attempt with the winds whipping at 13-15 knots while multi-directional waves tossed the duo randomly as the sun set and darkness enveloped them. But they were both strong and soldiered on in the tropical turbulence.
It appeared to be simply a matter of time as their mindset was strong.
At 2:02 am, unfortunately Öz was bitten by a cookiecutter shark near the halfway point under a bright full moon.
Twigg-Smith reported, “It was a really good course with wind blowing straight east making a nice push. No bad current either. They would have finished for sure. From now on I’m only doing day swims in the Ka’iwi Channel.
Yasemin is fine. Murat got up and walked off the boat, he seemed to be moving ok and will return to Turkey for treatment.”
Earlier this year, both Paul Leonard (ankle) and Joanne Norman (stomach) were also hit by cookiecutter sharks.
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