In 2018, I joined Team Antigua Island Girls and rowed 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean — the first all-Black team to row any ocean. In 2023, we did it again: 2,800 miles across the mid-Pacific, from Monterey Bay, California to Hanalei Bay, Kauai, Hawaii. First all-Black team. First Caribbean team. Three Antiguan women in a boat.

In between those crossings, I learned to freedive off the coast of Dominica, chasing a writing project that changed my life. In 2024, I set two national freediving records for Antigua and Barbuda.

But the adventures were never really the point. The point has always been the relationship between people and the water, between the African diaspora and an ocean that holds both beauty and trauma, between the communities I come from and the aquatic spaces that belong to them.

Today I run Splashing with Clashing, my swim school in Antigua, and I serve as Country Lead for the World Aquatics Discover Water pilot programme. I lead ocean education programming through AnuBlue, an ocean restoration nonprofit. I write speculative fiction that lives at the intersection of Caribbean mythology and the sea. And I work with adults — particularly diaspora communities in the UK, North America, and the Caribbean — who carry a deep fear of the water and are ready to transform it.

I've lived in five countries: Antigua, The Bahamas, Australia, England, and Costa Rica. I studied Sports Development at the University of Portsmouth on a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship. I hold certifications as a Lifesaving Society swim instructor trainer, ASCA swim coach, ACA stand-up paddle instructor, and PADI Divemaster. I am also a wing foiling student, adventure racer (Team Onyx), and recovering PhD student who chose the ocean over the academy — and has never looked back.

Christal Clashing

Ocean rower. Freediver. Storyteller. Restoring fractured relationships between people and the sea.

15- Minute Chat

the ocean holds stories we forgot we knew

I'm Christal Clashing — Antiguan ocean rower, freediver, author, and aquatic educator. My life's work is restoring fractured relationships between people and the sea: through adventure, education, and story.