For decades, channel swimmers living on Oahu in Hawaii have been training for their channel crossings by swimming back and forth across Waikiki Beach.
Often the training course is the 7 km Hawaiian Christmas Looong Distance Invitation Rough-H2O Swim – locally known as the Double Roughwater course.
Heading out from Kaimana Beach near the foot of Diamond Head volcano on Oahu and rounding the channel buoy outside the Ala Wai Boat Harbor, the out-and-back course features ocean views of many different types of fish, turtles, coral reef, and an occasional meandering shark and migrating whales. Sometimes, the conditions are favorable in one direction – and the opposite on the way coming back. Swimmers are often treated with variable windy conditions that whip up random surface chop.
Which makes for great ocean training.
Two of the many stalwarts of the Double Roughwater training pod include Ryan Leong and Steve Minaglia, MD [both shown below] who were both recently inducted in the Hawaii’ Swimming Hall of Fame in its Class of 2025 (see www.hshof.net).
Hawai’i Swimming Hall of Fame
The swimming categories in the Hawai’i Swimming Hall of Fame clude Competitive Swimming, Ocean Swimming, Channel Swimming, Masters Swimming, and Synchronized Swimming. Each category requires that person be of good moral character, has participated in the sport for a long enough time to have developed a full resume of accomplishments, is a contributing member of the community, and was born in Hawai’i or lived in the state for at least five years.
The Class of 2025 Ocean Swimming and Channel Swimming inductees included Ian Emberson, Gail Grabowsky, PhD, Ryan Leong, and Dr. Steven Minaglia [see here].
Iam Emberson
Ian Emberson was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1951, educated in England, and graduated from the University of Massachusetts. He moved to Hawai’i as a teenager and has been a resident of Hawai’i for 60 years, currently lives on Kaua’i, where he has swum the Napali coast many times. In 1978, he helped organize and completed the Hawaiian Ironman. He crossed the Molokai Channel in 1979 together with Michael Miller and competed in the inaugural Waikiki Roughwater Swim in 1970. He is also the long-time race director of the Maui Channel Swim since 1977 as well as the founder of Maui ‘Aumākua 2.4 Mile Swim, the Popoi’a Swim, the Outrigger Swim, and the North Shore Challenge. He also helped organize and completed the inaugural Hawaiian Ironman Triathlon on Oahu and later completed 4 more Ironmans.
On dryland, he served as president of the Waikiki Swim Club and chaired the Outrigger Canoe Club swimming committee for over 10 years.
The inaugural 1978 Ironman Triathlon was held in February 1978, with 15 starters and 12 finishers including Emberson. While he had stood on the beach at Waikiki numerous times, it was first time that he or others would then proceed with a 112-mile bike ride and the 26-mile marathon run – results are below:
- Gordon Haller 11:46:58
- John Dunbar 12:20:27
- Dave Orlowski 13:39:13
- Ian Emberson 14:03:25
- Sterling Lewis 14:04:35
- Tom Knoll 14:45:11
- Henry Forrest 15:30:14
- Frank Day 16:38:31
- John Collins 17:00:38
- Archie Hapai 17:24:22
- Dan Hendrickson 20:03:28
- Harold Irving 21:00:38
Gail Grabowsky, PhD
Gail Grabowsky, PhD was born in Los Angeles, California in 1963. She studied at Duke University and earned a PhD in Zoology in 1993. She first came to Hawai’i as a graduate student researcher in 1992, and returned as a post-doc in 1993, teaching at Chaminade University since 1997 in the fields such as biology, environmental sciences and renewable energy. She is currently Professor of Environmental Studies, the Dean of the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, and the Executive Director of Chaminade’s United Nations CIFAL Honolulu Sustainability Center. She wrote a book 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save Hawai’i that was published and released on Earth Day April 2007.
Dr. Grabowsky has won the female division of the Double Roughwater swim six times, won the North Shore Swim Series elite division, innumerable age-group firsts, a 14-time podium age-group finisher at the Waikiki Roughwater Swim, and has first female wins in the King’s Swim, the Wailea Roughwater and the Popoi’a Swim.
She served for 20 years on the Papahanaumokuakea Advisory Council, helped draft plans to ameliorate the conflict between fishers and other users of Ala Moana Park, educated and involved her students in hands-on ocean science and policy-making, and she is one of the people who discovered the link between the moon cycle and box jellyfish influxes.
Ryan Leong Ryan Leong (MSF bio here), was born in San Luis Obispo, California in 1971, and came to Hawai’i to live with family and attend the University of Hawai’i. He graduated in 1994 and has lived in Hawai’i for the past 33 years.
He has coached swimming, water polo, and triathlon at all levels from age group to NCAA and the Olympics. He has been the race director for the Double Roughwater Swim since 2022, a committee member of the Waikiki Roughwater Swim, a managing member of the Kaiwi Channel Association, and the Ala Moana Beach Swim Club, and a board member of the Outrigger Duke Kahanamoku Foundation.
He has finished a 19 hour 42 minute tandem crossing of the Molokai Channel with Stefan Reinke in their second attempt in a week. Their first attempt was aborted due to the presence of a tiger shark. He has completed 9 additional crossings in Hawai’i, completed a 12-day circumnavigation stage swim of Maui as part of Epic Swim Maui, an 11 hour 35 minute 37 km circumnavigation swim of Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, and numerous other open water swims throughout the state, including multiple top-3 age group finishes in the Waikiki Roughwater Swim, the Double Roughwater, the North Shore Swim Series, and the Outrigger Invitational.
Dr. Steven Minaglia Dr. Steven Minaglia (MSF bio here) and wife Madeleine Young moved back to Hawai’i in 2007 to be closer to family and to raise 4 children. While he runs a busy surgical practice at Queen’s Hospital, is Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Urogynecology, and Minimally Invasive Gynecologic Surgery at the University of Hawai’i John A. Burns School of Medicine, and is the only person in Hawaiʻi to hold all 3 board certifications.
He completed 41 Hawaiian channel crossings and 48 other marathon swims, including the first and (to date) only 206 km non-continuous stage swim around Oʻahu with Marek Lehocky, the 193 km 8 Bridges Hudson River Swim, 20 Bridges around Manhattan Island, Messinian Gulf, Strait of Gibraltar, and the Moloka’i Channel, Kaulakahi Channel between Kaua’i and Ni’ihau, a double crossing of the Maui Channel and Pailolo Channel, and crossings of the Kalohi and Catalina Channels. He also founded the Maui Nui Swim, a 3-day event across the ʻAuʻau, Kalohi, and Pailolo Channels and completed it 6 times. In total, he has organized 189 channel crosses for 54 swimmers.
He has numerous first place age-group finishes in the Double Roughwater, North Shore Swim Series, and Waikiki Swim Club Biathlon series winning it overall twice. His published research on cookiecutter sharks led to improvements in swimmer safety [see here; download here]. He is the Honorary Secretary of the Hawaiian Channel Swimming Association.
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