She’s Set to Swim the Complete California Coast (Sharks Allowing)

SAN FRANCISCO — Early one morning subsequent month, Catherine Breed, 33, will stroll into the ocean simply north of the California-Oregon border and begin swimming south. Between 80 and 126 days later — if issues go as deliberate — she’s going to attain the California-Mexico border, turning into the primary particular person ever to swim your entire size of California.

To attain this audacious aim, she should swim about 900 miles alongside rugged shoreline within the open Pacific, weak to nice white sharks, elephant seals, venomous jellyfish, storms, currents, hypothermia and rhabdomyolysis, a harmful situation during which muscle mass disintegrate from overexertion.

Like a lunar mission, Breed’s expedition, referred to as Swim California, has a versatile, weather-dependent launch date. Breed and a crew of 4 will eat, sleep and dwell aboard a 52-foot sailboat, sheltering at night time in coves and harbors when potential. Except on periodic relaxation days, she’s going to swim for 5 to eight hours every day, beginning the place she stopped the day prior to this. On clear, calm days, with a impartial present, she’ll cowl 10 to fifteen miles. To have the swim ratified by the World Open Water Swimming Association, the crew will add a day by day observer’s log that information air and water temperature, wind pace and path, Breed’s stroke price, wildlife incidents and geotagged images for each half-hour she’s within the water.

I met Breed on a latest Wednesday exterior the Parnassus campus of the University of California, San Francisco. In her day job at Intuitive Surgical, which she’s going to give up to make the swim, she trains medical doctors to make use of a robotic surgical system. One of those physicians is Dr. Jonathan Carter, who’s appearing as a consulting doctor for Swim California.

The three of us walked to one in every of Breed’s favourite lunch spots. Breed was drained, and as she advised us about her schedule, I may see why: Each week, she lifts weights thrice, swims roughly 40,000 yards (greater than 22 miles), works a full-time job and spearheads the logistical planning for her expedition.

“Yeah, long days,” she stated. “I’m not having, like, any crazy meltdowns, but I definitely have moments.” She paused. “You know when you see a frayed power line? That’s how I feel on the inside sometimes.”

A Team Effort

Breed likes to explain Swim California within the first-person plural: Not I’m swimming California, however we’re swimming California. In addition to Carter, her assist group contains an athletic coach, a nutritionist, a lawyer, a fundraiser, a publicist, a logistics coordinator, a kayaker and a ship pilot who has circumnavigated the world. Her boyfriend, Dave Monachello, will shadow the boat’s southward progress in a sprinter van, resupplying the crew at sea with recent greens, good paperbacks, pints of ice cream, spare boat-engine components and no matter else they want. At a dozen key places, Breed will come ashore for public schooling occasions meant to lift cash for and consciousness of ocean conservation points.

As we walked again to the hospital after lunch, Breed gave herself a kind of pep discuss.

“When I get to think about it, it’s such a big, stressful thing,” she stated. “But I’m also like, I get to take four months where all I really have to do is put my face in the ocean for five hours a day and then hang out on a boat — like, that’s not the worst way to spend four months.”

That night, Breed held a fundraising occasion on the personal, 166-year-old Olympic Club in downtown San Francisco. Those current had been from a variety of ages, together with seniors and elementary schoolers.

Former UC Berkeley, US Team Swimmer

Breed walked the viewers by means of some fundamentals of her biography. She was born and raised within the Bay Area, and her childhood was filled with crusing and swimming. She received a scholarship to swim on the University of California, Berkeley, the place she was a pre-med main, a two-time all-American swimmer and a member of the U.S. nationwide group.

After graduating in 2015, mates launched her to the Dolphin Club, an open water swimming and boating membership in San Francisco. It quickly turned clear that she may preserve the pace she had honed in faculty for a lot of miles. In 2017, she accomplished her first lengthy swim try, 21.3 miles throughout the lengthy axis of Lake Tahoe, in 8 hours, 56 minutes, breaking a report set by a person that had stood since 1987.

More profitable marathon swims adopted: 20.8 miles throughout the English Channel, 21.7 miles within the North Channel between Scotland and Ireland, the 28.5-mile 20 Bridges Swim Around Manhattan. Soon, she started listening to from strangers who had been impressed by her feats, together with a person who advised her that he began swimming once more and had misplaced 50 kilos.

Instead of pursuing medical faculty, she determined she would make her influence as a swimmer.

When folks study what Breed is doing, they wish to know the expedition’s price (round $500,000, from particular person donors and company sponsors), what she’s going to eat for breakfast (chia pudding, in a single day oats), whether or not they can be a part of her for a part of the swim (no), and if she shall be posting and livestreaming any of the swim (sure, on Instagram and YouTube.)

Goals: Promote Ocean Conservation, Inspire Others, Set Records

But maybe the 2 most typical questions are: Why are you doing this? And what in regards to the sharks?

Pacing the stage, Breed described a number of motives: to advertise ocean conservation, to encourage others, to set a report, to have a rare journey.

Breed introduced her marathon swims not simply as bodily feats, however as phases in an unfinished journey of self-knowledge. After her record-smashing swim at Lake Tahoe, she anticipated to set a report throughout the North Channel crossing. Instead, windy circumstances slowed her down, and it took far longer than she anticipated.

“A really important lesson on this swim was, you cannot bring hubris to the ocean,” she stated. “You can’t bring your plan to the ocean, because she’s going to be like, ‘Ha-ha, that’s funny.’”

Near the tip of her discuss, Breed drew a distinction between threat takers and threat “technicians.” The former act on impulse and hope to get fortunate; the latter strategize to reduce dangers. During Swim California, Breed will put on a small gadget that creates a magnetic discipline meant to confuse a shark’s sensory system. Someone in a kayak or a small boat will all the time be close to her, and at recognized scorching spots, a number of scanners will look ahead to sharks and sea life. “So I promise I’m not going to get bit by a great white shark,” she stated at one level, scary nervous laughs.

Surviving Jellyfish and ‘Bait Balls’

One of Breed’s worst swimming experiences occurred in 2025, when she was making an attempt a crossing of about 30 miles between the Farallon Islands and the Golden Gate Bridge. She began at 10:45 p.m., swimming by means of the night time to keep away from ships and catch an help from the tides.

She swam by means of plenty of jellyfish so dense they received inside her swimsuit. She spent hours in a “bait ball,” a cluster of small fish that may appeal to birds from above and predators from under.

Near the Golden Gate Bridge, having already swum greater than 25 miles with no moist go well with in 56 diploma water, she was shivering, depressing and borderline hypothermic.

She talked along with her assist crew solely throughout the “feeds” that marathon swimmers are allowed every half-hour by the World Open Water Swimming Association. She couldn’t contact the boat, however her assist group may toss her liquid vitamins and discuss briefly. On the boat was Amy Gubser, who in 2024 turned the primary particular person to swim the identical crossing in the wrong way. Gubser was unfazed by the depth of Breed’s feelings.

“There were tears, some cursing, but she was never really disrespectful,” Gubser recalled. What distinguished Breed was not the absence of doubt, worry and frustration, however her capability to proceed regardless of these feelings. “We’re just like, all right, that’s how you feel,” Gubser stated. “In half an hour, we’ll talk about it again.”

By Breed’s subsequent feed, she felt able to give up. She appeared on the Golden Gate Bridge, just a few miles away, and thought of Swim California. If she couldn’t full this swim, folks would have questions on a vastly longer one. Suddenly, she dove under the water, and as she resurfaced, screamed.

She accomplished the swim, breaking the earlier report by three minutes.

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This article initially appeared in The New York Times.

By Nick Romeo/Gabriela Bhaskar

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