HANALEI, Kauai » When Australian open-ocean marathon swimmer Penny Palfrey left Kaena Point on Oahu at 8:08 a.m. Saturday to swim the Kaieiewaho Channel to Kauai, she had high hopes of completing the grueling 72-mile swim. If so, she'd be the first person to do so, and it would be a feather in her cap to add to her growing Hawaii swim accomplishments.

This is the channel whose rough seas turned back Kamehameha the Great's war canoes on their way to conquer Kauai. But for Palfrey, a 47-year-old grandmother, it was not the wind and tides that were against her: A little more than halfway into her swim, at about dusk, the channel spit her out with multiple lacerations from hordes of Portuguese men-of-war.

She and her husband, Chris Palfrey, on his own marathon swim the same day, both hoped to set records. He succeeded, breaking the record for the fastest swim of the 26-mile Molokai Channel set in 1974; he is only the 13th person to successfully accomplish the swim and did so in 12 hours, 53 minutes.

Penny, 36 miles into the Kaieiewaho Channel, initially thought nothing of the stings, having encountered them frequently enough on other swims.

“;With this one it was a like a net that went over my entire body, and I thought, 'Wow, nasty sting,' and I never felt anything like that before,”; she said. “;Within a minute I was dry-retching violently and being repeatedly hit.

“;It was like putting your fingers into a 240-volt power socket—bang, and then stop. Bang and stop.”;

When her crew pulled her out, it got worse. She felt as if defibrillator paddles were banging her chest, causing her limbs to fling about.

She found she could not speak. “;I was becoming paralyzed, in a way,”; she said.

A day and a half later, her arms and legs were decorated with red welts looking like lacy henna tattoos on the fade, but otherwise Penny was fully recuperated and resting on Kauai's North Shore. “;I'm frustrated now. I got up early for months and months, trained hard, and I was so psyched to do it. I would like it to try it again.”;

“;I'm absolutely certain we'll be back here again,”; said Chris, adding that this is their second time in the islands and their first time to Kauai.

“;We love the islands and have been made very welcome,”; he said. “;We find the people here to be wonderfully supportive and really interested in what we're doing.”;

When the couple leaves Kauai this week, they will head to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where Penny will be inducted on May 9 into the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame.

“;Only 99 people from around the world have ever been chosen since 1875, so it's a really big deal,”; Chris said.

Said Penny, “;It doesn't get any better than that.”;