Warning: graphic images included at end of article.

Joanne Norman (Australia, 54, MSF bio here), a mother of four children, had set off on her Oceans Seven journey after seeing the names of two water polo colleagues written on the White Horse Inn in Dover on a holiday.

She recalls, “I was looking to do something significant since I turned 50. My husband and I had dinner at the White Horse Inn and knew at that point that I had to swim the Channel.“

So her journey began.

But like many audacious goals in life, her chosen path was not easy. She was living in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates where training for cold and long channel swims is a challenge in itself.

Her mind was set. She was prepared to battle with whatever Mother Nature presented in her way.

She did a cold water training in Croatia with Tim Denyer and Matt Duggan of Red Top Swimming Club. She also literally swam in circles in a cold bath in hotel in Abu Dhabi, around and around her swam diligently building up her cold water acclimatization.

Her first crossing was where her dream had originated in the English Channel. She had good conditions and knocked off the 33.5 km crossing from England to France in 12 hours 42 minutes in July 2021 at the age of 50.

One down, six to go for the Oceans Seven.

She next went to New York where she completed the 45.9 km 20 Bridges around Manhattan Island in 8 hours 6 minutes nearly exactly a year later in 2022. In 2023, she made short order of both the 14.4 km Strait of Gibraltar in 3 hours 18 minutes and the 32.3 km Catalina Channel in 11 hours 42 minutes.

Three down, four to go.

In 2024, she then had two grueling crossings in the 23 km Cook Strait in 8 hours 3 minutes and 35 km North Channel in 13 hours 9 minutes. Living in the UAE, she trained her body for the cold with focused diligence. Her years of hard work – honed early as a competitive pool swimmer and water polo player in her youth living north of Perth – paid off with her North Channel success. But it was tough. “13 hours in the North Channel was dreadful. The water was 14°C, but the air temperature was dreadful, between 5-9°C during the swim.”

She got it done. Now she had five down with two more channels to go: the Molokai Channel in Hawaii and the Tsugaru Channel in northern Japan.

Molokai is unpredictable and the longest of the Oceans Seven channels at 45 kilometers between Molokai Island and Oahu.

Her first crack at Molokai never materialized, but then her pilot Michael Twigg-Smith called to inform her of a window of opportunity this week. She had not expected to go so early with her original plans of making an attempt on April 13th. At the same time, she was anxious to get Molokai done, her sixth Oceans Seven channel. She first spoke with her father who is dealing with a rare form of leukemia to seek his guidance.

“I talked with my dad and asked him, ‘What do you think?’ We agreed and I off I traveled solo to Hawaii. I landed in Honolulu when Paul Leonard was hit by a cookiecutter shark earlier this week. I first met him in Croatia at the Red Top cold water training camp. I knew the risks in Molokai; Mike had told me about the cookiecutter sharks.

I was terrified about the risk when I started, but then I was at peace with myself once I started to swim. I was in a really good head space and wasn’t concerned.”

Twigg-Smith described her start, “She started at 6:00 pm at La’au Point on the west side of Molokai [see her tracker here].  She had been swimming well for 10 hours. The conditions were flat and the start was great with a strong current pushing her from the start at 6 knots. She was pushed 1.8 km of the rhumb line later. She couldn’t swim 200 yards in 30 minutes for about 2 hours at one point between 9 and 11 pm. But then she started to make more headway. Around 4 am, relief pilot Kainoa Lopes was suddenly swinging the boat towards her.”

It was a sight no one in the channel swimming community wants to experience: an experienced swimmer, swimming quite well, heading straight for the boat.

Norman said, “I knew exactly what hit me when it hit me. I was angry when it happened. I had saw the shark swimming fast from deep below and it hit me.”

What happened in the next moment can only be described as Aussie tough.

“I grabbed the shark with one hand and threw it off me in the next stroke. I rolled over and saw a hole in my bathers. I didn’t feel it. Sal Aloisio was kayaking with me at the time and saw me. Sal told him that I had been bitten.

It was so dark. Sal instructed me, ‘Go over to the boat’ so I swam over to the boat.”

Aloisio said, “She grabbed the little critter, only about a foot long, and threw it through the air. I saw it go tumbling and splash down.”  He called the crew in the boat and they knew they had an emergency on their hands, in the dark at 4:00 am in the middle of the Molokai Channel about 15 kilometers from Oahu. She was on track to finish between 8:00 and 9:00 am.

This is where Norman innate grit and incredible mindset became so readily apparent.

Norman remembers, “He was heavy fish. 30 centimeters, they pack a punch.”

She swam about 100 meters to the escort boat with specific instructions, “I told the crew, ‘Don’t touch me. I think something bit me. Shine the white light on me. We saw blood in the water, but not a lot. I asked, ‘How bad is it? Can I keep going?’ But Matt told me that I had to get out. I climbed out and stood up on the back of the boat. Matt looked at [the wound] again. He just said, ‘Turn around, don’t look at it, and lay down.

I was gutted. I was angry, shattered.”

With a gaping wound, bleeding, 3-4 centimeters deep, 6 centimeters across, Norman was still focused on her dream.

“The crew was amazing given their experience just a few days before with Paul [when he was bit by a cookiecutter shark in the foot]. They quickly packed it and wrapped towels on me.”

After getting bit by the shark at 4:00 am, the team was back in Ala Wai Harbor by 5:25 am when an ambulance took her to the Queen’s Medical Center. The crew recalls that Norman was calm and still talking despite the trauma that she just experienced.

Norman described the aftermath, “The staff was all looking at me with this open wound. It is perfectly round, a cookiecutter wound. I am on antibiotics and pain killers and will fly to Australia tomorrow where I will see a plastic surgeon. Perhaps it will require a skin graft, we do not know yet.

I have four children, three were born by cesarean section. The shark bite in my abdomen is like cesarean pain.”

But her journey is not over, not by a long shot.

She still has five down and two channels to go. Tsugaru is scheduled for July 2025 and Molokai remains on her horizon.

She promised, “It happened. It was a risk that materialized. But I will be back. I am finishing the Oceans Seven. This wound will be fixed and I will be ready to go. Coming back will be a mental challenge, but I want to close it out and get it done. I will wear my scar with pride; it is part of the journey. I am lucky that It was not a bigger shark. In the scheme in things, it could have been substantially worse and I have all my arms and legs.

We learned a few things. Bathers are not protective against the cookiecutter. We thought we had gone past the witching hour of 12 midnight to 1 am. And the Shark Shield was not effective against a cookiecutter.”

She gave great advice to others who will follow. “Channel swimmers have to be prepared to be uncomfortable for a long time. You need to have to tell yourself to do the hard things. Ultimately nothing is unachievable if you are prepared to work for it. It is hard work that will get you there.”

Photo above shows Mark Sowerby, Joanne Norman, Paul Leonard, and Matt Duggan in an unexpected reunion in Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu.

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