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Abbey Jackson Ferree, from Petersburg now living in Fairbanks, swam solo across the English Channel on June 21, crossing from England to France – around 40 miles in 14 hours and 23 minutes.

The swim is Ferree’s second leg of the Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming, following her completion last August of the 28.5-mile 20 Bridges Swim around Manhattan Island. A third event – the Catalina Channel, off Southern California, which she has a window to attempt in September – would complete the set, a feat that few swimmers worldwide have ever managed.

These endurance swims are all the more remarkable for a athlete who, around three years ago, could barely walk after being hospitalized for months with a grave illness that her doctors were not sure she could survive. Ferree, a former Petersburg Viking Swim Club competitor who walked away from the sport in her twenties, has said that surviving that 2023 health crisis is part of what led her back to the water and, ultimately, to this crossing of the English Channel.

And now, 100 years after the first woman ever crossed the Channel, Gertrude “Trudy” Ederle in 1926, Ferree continues to swim her own way into history.

Her crossing began at a beach near Dover, England in darkness near 3 a.m. on June 21 and finished over 14 hours later on the French coast at Cap Gris-Nez.

Leaving nothing to chance

Growing her strength and preparing for this swim has propelled her life for three years and dominated almost every day of the last nine months.

“After three years of just obsessing about it,” she said, “you think you’re going to show up just ready, or more knowledgeable, or something magic. And I showed up and I was like, man, this just feels like every other day – but I have to pull out this incredibly epic swim.”

Her training built methodically. She would wake at 4 or 5 a.m. to swim before starting work at 8, spent lunch breaks on running, strength work, and a rotating schedule of physical therapy, chiropractic, massage and acupuncture to manage the lopsided muscles that come from breathing on one side. She built her mileage in four-week cycles, each month ramping toward a bigger week, until a peak around Mother’s Day when she logged roughly 80,000 yards in seven days and completed a 10-hour swim. All told, she estimates she swam more than 1.1 million yards – over 625 miles – since July of last year.

“I was leaving nothing to chance,” she said.

Channel-specific work meant stacking hard efforts to learn what her body did when it was already tired – back-to-back six-hour swims at the end of April, big swims followed the next day by medium ones. She even added a nighttime ballet class to her schedule through the dark Fairbanks winter because, she said, it forced her brain to work in new ways.

Most of her cold-water conditioning came in Alaska – cold plunges and cold showers at first, then big weekend swims in Fairbanks-area lakes once they thawed, plus sessions back home in Petersburg in roughly 55-degree water. By the time she reached the Channel the cold was a known quantity. However, this year the Channel ran unusually warm. “Anything above 60 degrees is a pretty toasty swim after you’ve done something like Cork Distance Week,” a cold-water training camp she completed last year.

A rehearsal in the dark

Four weeks before the Channel, Ferree did something she had never done before: a big swim in the dark. On Memorial Day, she flew to Connecticut at the urging of her crewmate and mentor, accomplished open-water swimmer Liz Fry – whom Ferree had met at Cork Distance Week in Ireland. She got into a cold saltwater cove at dusk with Liz and Liz’s friend Chris kayaking alongside. It was a deliberate rehearsal, so that the Channel wouldn’t be her first ever night swim.

It was valuable mental preparation. The water was about 56 degrees and falling, and as it turned black she felt bursts of water tugging at her from below. “My brain thought: was that something big swimming under me?” she wrote in an account of the swim. It turned out to be the wash from the kayak paddles. She cycled through every worry – her sore shoulder, whether it would recover in time, the mile of dark water, “what was that shadow?” She caught herself “wishing I didn’t have a degree in fisheries biology.”

When Ferree stopped to clear her goggles, tense and fighting the dark water, Liz urged her to look up. “Abbey, look at the sky,” she said. “Not everyone gets to do this.” By the time they turned for the beach, Ferree was picking out constellations between breaths. “I went in feeling like a weenie and got out feeling strong,” she wrote – the same shift she would need a month later, when the dark, the cold and the doubt all came back in the Channel.

The first 10 hours

She arrived at the boat in England on no sleep, still partly on Alaska time, running on adrenaline. Fry assured her that was normal.

“I told her, ‘I’m not ready for a big swim,’” Ferree recalled. “And she said, ‘Congratulations – everybody feels like this before their big swim. You never go into swims like this fully rested. Once you get in the water, everything’s okay.’”

Ferree started in the dark, near 3 a.m. The pilot boat a few hundred yards offshore guiding her with a faint spotlight; she raised her hands and set off at the blast of a horn, the white cliffs of Dover behind her. She spent the first two hours alone in the dark before the sun came up.

And for about 10 hours, conditions were pretty good. The hardest part early on was the boat’s exhaust, which hung over the water in the soft wind; at one point to avoid the fumes she swam some 25 yards off the support boat, watching ferries and barges “the size of buildings” pass nearby. Jellyfish – lion’s mane, compass, moon and a couple she couldn’t identify – were a near-constant presence. The stings, she found, weren’t as bad as the stories she heard growing up had led her to fear. She tried to turn the unavoidable stings into a game, treating each one as a bit of good luck. In her written account she called them “spicy kisses.”

One particular jelly tested her patience. Eric, who was texting updates to a WhatsApp group following the swim, had coincidentally just fielded a question from the group – any jellyfish yet? – when he looked up to find Ferree stopped dead mid-stroke, both fists clenched over her head. “You could tell they were just fists of anger,” he said. She clawed a big lion’s mane off her face with both hands, took the next couple of strokes “real mad,” and settled back into her rhythm. Ferree wrote that she “threw a silent fit” underwater and flung the thing behind her but is glad that Eric got a good laugh out of the deal.

Throughout the swim, she relied on small mental tricks to keep the negativity spirals away. When her mind started to slip, she counted her breaths to her lucky number, 105, then let herself look up to see where she was.

Sometimes Liz communicated that she wanted her to pick up the pace by making a circular motion with her hand.

“‘Do the thing,’” Ferree said, describing a fast-then-easy stroke pattern Liz had taught her. “And then I guess I picked up my pace enough, and it made the pilots happy.”

A good crossing, she is quick to say, is partly just luck. “Everybody has a great first part of the English Channel, unless you’re really unfortunate,” she said. “The weather window is truly luck. Your pilots do the best they can, but when you schedule, there’s no way of predicting what the weather will be.”

The last four hours

During the final four hours the wind came up – gusting 20 to 25 knots, by her husband Eric Ferree’s account from the boat – and it opposed the tide and current. “You get wind-driven chop, and then that opposes the current, and it turns it into a washing machine,” Eric said. Ferree swam the final stretch through three and four-foot slop.

Like she had during the difficult Hudson River swim last year, Ferree tried at first to make a game of the choppy waves – timing the catch and the breath to the waves, “trying to still look like a graceful swimmer.” Before long, it stops being fun. Ferree said the 20 Bridges swim, where she’d fought four brutal hours of crosswind chop on the Hudson, was what mentally got her through these windy hours on the Channel.

There was pain to manage, too. Her elbow -diagnosed, after 20 Bridges, as tennis elbow – flared so badly around hour 11 that she briefly feared it would end the swim. She took her scheduled painkiller early and swam straight-armed until it kicked in. The salt swelled her nose completely shut. Mid-Channel, with cold but still-dexterous hands, she pulled out her nose ring, tossed it carefully to Liz without touching the boat, and switched to a nose plug for the first time in her life.

Turns out she loved the nose plug. Before then, “I had just refused to look like that much of a nerd,” she said. “But oh my god, it was a game changer.”

From the boat, Eric worried about the waves and found her missed breaths hard to watch. “She’d turn her head to take a breath and she was completely underwater, and there’s just nothing you can do about it,” he said. “You’re just hoping the next one’s better.” His worry, he said, wasn’t that she would drown – there was too much support on the boat for that – but that any one wave could be the thing that ended the swim. “Every wave was a bit of a challenge to her entire swim.”

A swimmer friend kept texting Eric the same line on the way across: your Channel swim doesn’t start until you’re two miles from France. “He was right,” Eric said. “That’s what separates you from finishing or not.”

By then Ferree had passed her own ceiling and kept going. “All it takes is one bad leg cramp and your whole body can seize,” she said. But she had decided the only way she would come out of the water was if the crew pulled her – “because I was going to die, not because I wanted to quit.” A favorable shift in the tide finally helped push her toward the finish, but only after what Eric estimated was an hour and a half of absolute, all-out effort.

“There’s definitely a cruising speed you can do all day,” Ferree said. “But the thing about the Channel is that the weather’s so unpredictable, the currents are unpredictable – you have to be ready to sprint. If you’d told me at the beginning that I’d hold a really solid threshold pace for the first hours and then finish by sprinting for four hours, I would have told you there’s no way.”

The finish

The final stretch gave her one more unforgettable jellyfish kiss. In the final strokes, with Eric and Liz cheering her in and the dinghy rowing ahead, a small lion’s mane wrapped a tentacle around her nose plug and would not let go, slapping her across the lips. “I cannot finish with this jellyfish on my face,” she remembers thinking. She stopped, ripped off the nose plug and the jellyfish together, and looked up to Eric and Liz waving her on – “What are you doing? Keep swimming!” She put the plug back on, took a few strokes, and the same jellyfish lodged in her armpit and rode along until she gave up trying to shake it.

She pushed through those final 500 yards and arrived at a beach of algae-covered rocks, not quite the dreamy pebble beach she had imagined when visualizing the finish during training.

She dove down to gather pebbles and stuffed them into her suit, a keepsake for the family sauna at Fielding Lake back home – a rock-collecting tradition started by her husband’s late Uncle John.

Then “I just started ugly crying, like, so bad,” she said. She picked a big rock to climb out on, “this little mermaid rock,” tried to stand, and nearly went down.

“You should not try to stand up on a slippery rock after swimming for that long,” she said. “I almost fell – and luckily Eric did not see it, because I thought I’d never live it down.”

She sat, raised her arms, and the swim was over. One of the boat captains, Harry, rowed the dinghy to her, and rather than haul her exhausted body into the dinghy, he towed her back to the boat; she flipped onto her back to take in the French cliffs and the seabirds on the way.

Eric briefly lost track of her. Busy clearing the deck for her return – gathering dry clothes, a towel, hot water – he looked up as the dinghy came back and didn’t see her in it. “Where’s my wife? You left her in France?” he remembered thinking, until he spotted “eight little white fingers hanging on to the transom,” where she was being towed alongside. “I was like, oh, thank God.” When the dinghy reached the boat, after more than 14 hours in the water, she climbed the boat’s ladder under her own power. “I was pretty happy that she was able to climb a ladder,” Eric said. Ferree herself was surprised she could manage it. Once she was aboard and in dry clothes, Eric added, she seemed barely affected by what she’d just done. “I was pretty impressed.”

On the boat, “when I saw [Liz] smiling for me,” Ferree said, “that was better than [finishing] the English Channel.”

“I felt like I hadn’t been fully happy for nine months,” she said. “I just remember getting on that boat, and it was just sweet relief.”

On the boat Ferree talked nonstop for half an hour – pretty reasonable after 14 hours of barely speaking a word. The crew video-called Ferree’s mother, Pat Johnston, at home in Petersburg, to prove she was safe and sound on the boat. Then Abbey slept for two and a half hours all through the wet, bumpy ride back to England.

Her crew

It was a forty-mile solo swim, but Ferree is emphatic that she didn’t do it alone. Her husband, Eric, handled her feeding and “knew the inner workings of my mind better than most.” Liz Fry, the mentor who had also served as her crew during Manhattan, was for Ferree the calm, experienced presence that she can totally trust. The boat, the Masterpiece, was piloted by Fred and Harry Mardle, fifth- and sixth-generation local fishermen.

“As soon as I found out [that they were commercial fishermen], I was like, yeah – these are the guys to take me across the Channel,” she said.

Up next

Ferree has a September window for the Catalina Channel – Sept. 10 and 11 – a roughly 20-mile crossing she’ll begin around 10 p.m. as a night swim from Catalina Island to the Southern California mainland near Long Beach. Finishing it would complete her Open Water Triple Crown.

It would also make a small piece of Alaska history. By records kept by the Marathon Swimmers Federation, only two Alaskans have ever completed the Triple Crown: William Schulz of Ketchikan, the first, who finished in 2018, and Anchorage’s Jordan Iverson, who in 2024 became the first Alaska woman to do it. Should Ferree complete Catalina in September, she would become the third Alaskan to ever earn the distinction. It was Iverson who alerted Ferree to the unexpected 20 Bridges opportunity last year that started this own Triple Crown bid.

Her plan between now and then is mostly maintenance: keep the fitness she built, add a little more running to help with the late-swim sprinting, and get in some saltwater time, possibly back in Petersburg or in California, before the swim.

Then “hopefully,” she said, “my Triple Crown.”

A worthy cause

Ferree paired her Channel crossing with a fundraiser she calls “An English Channel Swim for AS Awareness,” for ankylosing spondylitis, an inflammatory autoimmune disease her sister lives with. The idea took shape, she said, after a training swim at Crane Lake near Petersburg where her sister – neck and hips fused, sore everywhere – hiked to the lake on her own to watch.

“In my brain it was a bigger deal that my sister hiked to that lake by herself,” Ferree said. “That was a way bigger win than me being able to endure 55-degree water.”

The contrast stayed with her. “A lot of my swim was chosen suffering,” she wrote in an email to the Pilot. “I chose the cold water, the long training days, the discomfort, the nerves, and the uncertainty. But people living with chronic illness do not get to choose when their pain shows up or how long they have to keep going. They just have to keep going anyway.”

Money raised goes to the Spondylitis Association of America, which funds research, physician education, advocacy and support programs for people with the disease. Ferree set a goal of $5,000, but said awareness matters more to her than the total. “Even one more person understanding what AS is means something to me,” she wrote.

The fundraiser – and the story behind it – is at spondylitis.org/an-english-channel-swim-for-as-awareness, and a link is also posted on Ferree’s Facebook page.

Reflecting on the swim

A few days after her crossing, Ferree shared her final thoughts on the swim by email with the Petersburg Pilot, and she offered this advice:

“If anyone walks away with anything from my swims, I hope it is this … We are capable of more than we think. Maybe not all at once. Maybe not in the way we imagined. Maybe not without pain, comparison, doubt, fear, or the parts of ourselves we wish were prettier … But keep going … Focus on what you can … Do not marinate in the rest.”

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WASHINGTON — What’s more American than apple pie? Capitalism. And an array of merchandise and influence is on sale for the 250th birthday of the United States.

An America250 $275 Liberty Lux American Prosperity decorative throw pillow, anyone? How about a $25 Freedom 250 youth tee?

America250, a commission created by Congress a decade ago, and Freedom 250, President Donald Trump’s entity formed last year, each operate on their own respective tracks as a nonprofit and as a limited liability company. Both are employing staff, soliciting corporate donors and spending taxpayer funds. 

That means people, businesses and nonprofits are getting a slice of the semiquincentennial pie, some bigger than others. But there is no clear accounting of which entities are getting the bigger shares and no one associated with either organization offered a full explanation to States Newsroom. Reports also show at least $10 million in taxpayer money flowing from America250 to Freedom 250, and some Democratic lawmakers claim more has been redirected.

The commission’s nonprofit arm, America250.org, lists 850 items available from its official online store: apparel, toys, games, eyewear, housewares, challenge coins, holiday ornaments, and a premier collectible line including an $8,000 painting by Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based “speed painter” Cody Sabol. 

America250 Chair Rosie Rios said the nonprofit arm receives a portion of the profits.

“It’s a licensing arrangement, so we get a percentage of the merchandise sold,” Rios told States Newsroom during a June 22 interview.

When asked how to differentiate between America250 the commission and America250 the nonprofit, Rios said “Think of it as one entity. America250 is one entity working together on the planning side and the implementations.”

An America250 spokesperson declined to specify what percentage of funds from merchandise that America250’s nonprofit arm received in 2025 and 2026, but provided a written statement.

“America250 is proud to be partnering with numerous household brands to bring the America250 logo and merchandise to communities across the country. These partnerships and merchandise are designed to help expand public awareness of the commemoration and give Americans additional ways to participate in the Semiquincentennial,” according to a spokesperson, adding the list of merch has grown in recent months.

“Our partners help bring the celebration to Americans through the brands they know and trust, advancing our goal of reaching all 350 million Americans as part of our ‘350 for 250’ initiative,” the statement continued. 

In its 2025 legally mandated annual report to Congress, the America250 commission touted “a strong portfolio of strategic licensing agreements” that generated new revenue.

States Newsroom reached out to the offices of bipartisan members of Congress who currently serve as commissioners, and several staff replied they did not have information about how much money is being generated by merchandise.

The commissioners include Sens. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Alex Padilla, D-Calif., and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., as well as Reps. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., Maria Salazar, R-Fla., Dwight Evans, D-Pa., and Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J.

Freedom 250, the Trump entity, offers 62 branded products for sale on its website store, including shirts, hats, can koozies, stickers, pins and a colonial model flag with “250” featured inside the circle of the 13 stars.

At least two booths selling merchandise are open at the Great American State Fair on the National Mall, one of Freedom 250’s main events.

Freedom 250 press officials did not respond to States Newsroom regarding where merchandise profits are directed.

Merchandise representing both America250 and Freedom 250 has been spotted in tourist shops in Washington, D.C., and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, just over the Virginia border.

Millions in spending

Congress initially appropriated $79.8 million over several years to the America250 commission, beginning in 2019, according to the entity’s annual report.

Most of its spending in 2025 — $17 million — went to America250 programs, according to the report.

That included field trips for roughly 550 students, $250,000 in grants for young entrepreneurs, an America250 time capsule to be buried in Philadelphia on July 4, a “Giving Forth” initiative to raise awareness about mid-year donations to nonprofit organizations, and New Year’s Eve-style ball drops to ring in Independence Day in every U.S. time zone and territory, among other initiatives.

“We are driven by purpose, not politics and our bipartisan Commission focuses on serving the interests of all Americans as mandated by our legislation. If the 250th anniversary is going to mean something to all Americans, it needs to be nonpartisan and belong to every American,” an America250 spokesperson said.

The organization awarded $935,000 in grants to state and local entities between 2021 and 2025, according to the report. A 990 nonprofit tax filing for 2025 was not yet available on the website.

The report also showed the White House Task Force 250 — the precursor to Freedom 250 — spent roughly $31 million of the America250 funds last year, with most, $22 million, paying for the June 2025 military parade that occurred on Trump’s birthday, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Army.

An America250 spokesperson said a comprehensive list of private donors was not readily available, but the annual report identified new private-sector sponsors as The Coca-Cola Company, Starbucks, Walmart, Kraft Heinz, JPMorgan Chase, General Mills, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and RAM, BNY, and Leidos.

According to America250.org’s most recent 990 tax filing, the entity ended 2023 with just under $14.6 million in revenue — $11.1 million of which was program service revenue, and roughly $3.3 million of which came from other gifts and contributions. 

The organization spent $12.2 million for the year. A category labeled as “other” clocked in at around $8.3 million. Salaries amounted to just over $1 million, not including employee benefits. Information technology and conferences each amounted to $469,000 and fundraising expenses were nearly $343,000, among other smaller line items. 

Nine employees, and one former, are listed on the 990, with salaries ranging from $101,185 to $285,690, including incentive bonuses, the highest of which reached $43,800. 

The nonprofit gave out $175,000 in grants to organizations and local governments in 2023, according to the filing. Most of the 16 individual grants were doled out as $10,000 in seed money for state governments, and nonprofit historical societies and foundations, including those in Arizona, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington and West Virginia.

Congress allocated $150M 

In 2025, as part of the “big, beautiful bill,” the Republican-led Congress approved another $150 million for “events, celebrations, and activities surrounding the observance and commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, to remain available through fiscal year 2028.” 

The lawmakers directed the money to Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum “acting through the director of the National Park Service.” Burgum is an ex offico member of the America250 commission as well.

According to commissioners Coleman and Padilla’s offices, America250 was promised $100 million of the “big beautiful bill” funds.

The commission has only received $25 million to date, according to Padilla’s and Coleman’s offices.

“Freedom 250 siphoned off funding but the details are murky due to their lack of transparency,” a spokesperson for Coleman’s office said.

According to an America250 spokesperson, “The final mix of funding cannot be known at this point as our programs are still in various stages of development and execution, and our fundraising for them continues.”

“However, Chair Rios’ commitment to Congress has been to engage the private sector for a true public/private partnership to engage all Americans and not rely on federal funding only,” according to the spokesperson.

The Department of the Interior did not provide to States Newsroom, as requested, a breakdown of how the funds have been allocated so far, but offered a written statement.

“As with all of our signature 250 events, resources have been made available to ensure these historic occasions are a success. The Memorandum of Understanding signed with all 250th related entities made that clear and we are proud to be partners in celebrating these iconic events honoring our 250th thanks to the bold leadership of President Donald J. Trump,” according to the statement from a department spokesperson. 

Freedom 250 was formed as a limited liability company in late October 2025, according to division of corporation records in Delaware, where it is registered.

The National Park Foundation, a congressionally chartered fundraising arm for the National Park Service, created Freedom 250 as a separate LLC “to help NPS with the execution of these events, while keeping this effort distinct and separate from the day-to-day work NPF does to support our national parks.”

‘From Vanity to Insanity’

U.S. House Democrats slammed Freedom250 in a new report on July 2, calling it “a shadow organization capable of infiltrating the celebrations and injecting America’s 250th with Trump’s extreme, partisan agenda.”

The 55-page interim report titled “From Vanity to Insanity: How the White House Cheated the American People Out of their 250th Birthday,” said the administration “hijacked” the celebrations.

“Significant questions remain unanswered, beginning with the complete donor lists and the ultimate disposition of the funds that Freedom 250 has raised and spent. But the record already assembled supports a conclusion that should alarm the American people,” according to the report.

A spokesperson for Freedom 250 dismissed the report Thursday as “categorically false” and “disheartening.”

“This so-called ‘report’ is nothing more than a partisan smear from politicians who would rather manufacture division than celebrate America’s 250th birthday alongside the rest of the country. Congressional members should be ashamed they are spending countless hours fabricating a report instead of joining Americans in creating an absolutely beautiful celebration,” according to a statement provided to States Newsroom by Freedom 250 spokesperson Danielle Alvarez.

Alvarez criticized America250’s use of money, saying they had “nothing to show for it.”

“Freedom 250 was created because the American people deserved better. We stepped in to rescue our nation’s 250th birthday from years of wasted time, wasted money, and failed planning. We are unapologetic about celebrating the greatest nation on earth, and we are delivering the historic celebration Americans deserved,” Alvarez said.

Mobile exhibits funded

According to USAspending.gov, a $10 million grant originally given to America250.org was transferred to the National Park Foundation in late 2025, via the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and directed to Freedom 250 to fund “Freedom 250 Trucks,” six mobile exhibits stopping at libraries and community events. 

The trucks provide curriculum resources from the private, Michigan-based Hillsdale College, a Christian institution led by Trump ally Larry Arnn, who spoke at Freedom 250’s “Rededicate 250,” a faith-based, Christian-oriented event held on the National Mall in May.

Freedom 250 did not respond to State’s Newroom’s request for a comprehensive list of donors and amounts pledged to the LLC. 

The watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington published an investigation of sponsorship money for Freedom 250 in May. Sponsors mentioned in their report included January AI, SAP, United Airlines, Ultimate Fighting Championship and Mosaic.

The New York Times reported in February that a donor solicitation obtained by the news organization revealed promises of special access and preferred seating for those who gave $500,000. A private Freedom 250 reception invite was offered, where sponsors who give $1 million can get a photograph with Trump, and the level of $2.5 million reportedly included possible speaking roles at the president’s July 4 program.

Freedom 250 did not respond to a request to confirm the Times’ report.

Freedom 250 also did not respond to questions about staffing. A quick LinkedIn search puts the range of Freedom 250 employees between two and 10.

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