The first person from Alaska has now achieved the Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming
Abbey Jackson Ferree, originally from Petersburg, Alaska now living in Fairbanks, made history with her Catalina Channel crossing on September 11th in 12 hours 2 minutes. Her husband Eric Ferree and famed coach and mentor Liz Fry together with pilots David and Elwood Harvey, observer Marc Horowitz, escort kayakers Ryland Sutton and Steve Sutton were part of her support crew on the Pacific Moon.
Back in 2023, Jackson was sidelined after being hospitalized for months. Her doctors did not know if she would survive. But the former University of Alaska swimmer was determined and an aquatic life offered her a path back to health and achieving her dreams. She explains, “I started endurance sports after a life-changing illness and hospitalization in 2023. I was not fearless after that experience. If anything, I became more aware of how fragile life and the body can be. But I also realized I had come very close to dying without ever truly going after the things I had always wanted.
Swimming has always been the thing I came back to.
As a kid, I read Swimming to Antarctica, and I loved the way Lynne Cox talked about swimming. It felt like she understood something about it that I understood too, even before I had the words for it. That book became a comfort to me.”
That passion eventually took her from Alaska to New York City.
In 2025, Jackson completed the 20 Bridges Swim around Manhattan Island in 8 hours 51 minutes. She later trained hard at the Cork Distance Week where she first met a mentor and International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame Honor Swimmer Liz Fry. Fry invited her to train – including night swims in Connecticut – with her marathon swimming group.
Those preparations were building blocks to her success – augmented by early morning workouts before heading off to work in Fairbanks.
All that training worked out well this summer when she completed an English Channel crossing – while battling jet lag from a long flight from Alaska – on June 21st in 14 hours 23 minutes. Under the guidance of escort pilots Fred and Harry Mardle and observer Jim Taylor, her husband Eric Ferree served as her crew chief.
She talked about her first channel crossing, “When I returned to swimming, I decided to pursue my lifelong dream of swimming the English Channel.
Along the way, I met people whose support changed my life and that dream grew from the English Channel to the Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming. As these swims began drawing more attention, I realized I had an opportunity to use some of that attention to do something good – to support someone who has supported me from the very beginning.
My sister lives with ankylosing spondylitis. I can’t fully understand what it is like to live with chronic pain, fatigue, and the uncertainty she has faced, but I have watched how deeply it has affected her life. I have also learned how important awareness is – not only within the medical community, but among families, friends, and coworkers.
If I can use this moment to make even a small part of the world more informed, more understanding, and better for my sister and people like her, then I want to try.“
To learn more, visit here.
Her channel swim enabled her to realize a great lesson many marathon swimmers do, “The last several hours [of my English Channel crossing] were extraordinarily hard. There were moments when the finish felt impossibly far away, and I had to keep finding reasons to take another stroke without knowing exactly how much longer I would need to do it.
But eventually, France appeared in front of me.
I learned you can be afraid. You can hurt. You can doubt yourself. Y ou can reach the part where you start bargaining with yourself and looking for a way out.
And you can keep going.“
Learn more about Jackson and how she eloquently describes her Triple Crown journey here.
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