She Creatures make a splash across the English Channel
Published 1:30 am Tuesday, August 11, 2026
It seemed like the perfect plan. Dive into the water at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, July 29, at Samphire Hoe off the English coast near Dover, swim south to France, bag another Channel Relay. Easy, peasy.
The night before at the requisite carbo-loading dinner, the five members of the “She Creatures” relay team were excited to have drawn an early morning start time. Their swim would be totally in the daylight given the high latitude and summer timing. Then one of their phones rang: “Be at the dock at 10 p.m., your slot has been moved to tonight.”
The scramble was on and Vashon’s Heidi Skrzypek, 57, and Susan Parsons, 66, plus Caitlin Bell, 43, Seattle; Lauren Signorino, 38, San Diego; and Louise Hyder-Darrington, 65, Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, launched into the night. They would complete the swim 14 hours and 22 minutes later at Plage de Chatelet, France.
Channel swimming is a big industry with schedulers, boat captains and observers all critical parts of the puzzle. Rules are strict. Swimmers wear only a swimsuit, bathing cap and goggles, and they can only touch the boat on exiting their relay legs.
For Heidi, a real estate advisor for Windermere Vashon, this was her third Channel Relay swim. But for Susan, a pediatric ICU nurse at Mary Bridge Hospital in Tacoma, it was her first big swim. “Heidi’s been trying for years to get me to do it; telling me I could do it. I finally acquiesced/had a brain fart/complete loss of reason. We were supposed to go last year but I kept getting pneumonia which interfered with training (duh). Basically, I thought, why not?” Having always enjoyed swimming, Susan had gotten into the open water sport during COVID.
In contrast to Mary Singer’s solo crossing swim last summer where the seas were so rough that Vashon islanders watching the camera feed had to reach for the Dramamine, the She Creatures were treated to glassy surface conditions and relatively warm water (65-69 F). But seemingly the Channel keeps some kind of cosmic score, so in exchange for the calm and warm conditions there were jellyfish galore. Not just a few; waves of them.
First near the English shore were benign moon jellies. Usually less than a foot in diameter and with short non-stinging tentacles, they are a surprise to meet in the dark but inconsequential.
In the middle of the channel came compass jellyfish. They are yellow and brown (not that you would know that in the middle of the night), and they pack a sting like a nettle.
Finally, near the French coast was a phalanx of barrel jellies which are big (over a foot in diameter) but pack a bit less punch to their sting.
During the relay, each swimmer is successively in the water for one-hour rotations until they reach France. As is frequently the case for this swim, there was huge initial progress with the French coast looming after 11 hours. But a nasty current held and swept them around the headland of Cap Gris Nez, where waters notoriously converge. Once around the point, tidal conditions eased. Susan swam her third (and the team’s final) leg to reach the French shore.
What’s next for these two? Besides supporting Mary Singer in her around Vashon swim, Heidi has three named events on her radar: an Aug. 28 relay swim around Manhattan, Bridge to Bridge (Golden Gate to Bay Bridge in San Francisco Bay) on Sept. 11 and the Alcatraz Open Swim on Sept. 13 (wait, wasn’t that supposed to be impossible and why they put the penitentiary there?). Susan expects to do another relay but nothing on the schedule yet.
Although COVID was a horrible event in our recent history, it did have the positive effect of getting a lot of local swimmers into the sound communing with the seals and kelp all while still social distancing. Let the achievements continue.
Pat Call is an occasional writer for the Beachcomber specializing in non-traditional sports.
