Lauren Tischendorf has this week become the first woman to swim solo around Lord Howe Island in a single 35 kilometre stretch.
The Sydney based school teacher completed her circumnavigation of Lord Howe Island on Tuesday, finishing the ocean journey with a time of 13 hours 50 minutes and 26 seconds.
On social media, Tischendorf described a treacherous journey where she was circled by sharks, and forced to swim in the same spot for 2 whole hours, as well as not eating for the last 8 hours of the swim.
“I did it!” Tischendorf wrote on Instagram after the event.
“It was treacherously joyful the entire way with 2.5 M swell (bar one lost of 20 mins and another 1 hour stretch). The island had bets I would do it.
“I swam in the same spot for 2 hours, circled by dangerous sharks and didn’t stop to eat for the last 8 hours, due to not wishing to be a greasy morsel for said sharks.
“At no point did I want to get out, I just wanted to finish.
“It was a long day in the ocean – she’s a gorgeous beast.”
Prior to her attempt at the Lorde Howe Island circumnavigation, Tischendorf set up a Kickstarter page to raise money to cover the costs of the swim and wrote that she had “always been heckled that I could not swim as well, as far out, nor as fast as my fellow male counterparts”.
She decided to prove the hecklers wrong, and that she did.
“The foundation of the challenge to emphasise that women, like men, can achieve beyond the realm of what may seem possible is vital,” she wrote.
“A need to explore and adventure beyond, to give purpose to daily grinds and laps of life, to prove the I could keep up, if not beat, a chance conversation about an island within my state borders was breached and here we currently float.
“Not for fame, nor for fortune, but for pushing the human experience, to connect deeply to nature below and share the lived experiences and share the awareness of those unable to.”