Mackenzie Miller grew up swimming on Oahu. She and her father, Mike, have both crossed the Molokai Channel from Molokai Island to Oahu: father in 1979 in 16 hours 50 minutes in a tandem swim with Ian Emberson and daughter in 2009 at the age of 19 in 14 hours 45 minutes.

They both landed on Sandy Beach, a popular bodysurfing spot on Oahu. But sometimes Sandy goes off and the surf gets pretty gnarly [see video below]. Mackenzie finished her Molokai Channel crossing on one of those days [see above]. She remembers her finish, “I was stuck in the current. My last contact with my dad who said, ‘If you don’t get through this, you’re gonna have to swim around to Hanauma Bay and you’ll finish at night.’ I put my head back in the water and gave whatever else I had in me. I had already been stung on the face at that point. And then when I finally got to the waves, I paused because I was waiting for the sets to die to swim in. The waves were huge and this bodyboarder, local guy, saw me. He said, ‘Wait, wait. I’ll tell you when to go. He told me and I caught the smallest wave possible into shore.”

There are few channel crossings around the world where the shorebreak can get as big and risky for a channel swimmer to navigate their finish onto shore as Sandy’s on the east side of Oahu.

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