Catherine Breed, 33, didn’t look terribly exhausted when we caught up with her last Friday, even though she’d been swimming for more than 100 days. Every day, she chalked up more miles toward her dream of swimming the entire 900-mile length of the California coast. She relied on her solid training, her crew, and the process of discovering, recovering, pivoting, and getting out there the next day to move the needle a little farther every day.
On Monday at 11:25:43 Pacific Time, she officially completed her historic Swim California effort. For three years prior to launch, she lived and breathed the swim details while holding a full-time job in medical device sales. She founded a nonprofit, Sea Dreamers, that supports women and girls in open-water swimming and raises awareness for ocean conservation.
She put on six pounds of muscle on purpose. Big swim adventures like hers take huge amounts of planning. She’s done plenty of marathon swims—the English Channel, North Channel, and 20 Bridges among them—and set the record for the fastest south-to-north Monterey Bay swim.
But over 111 days of swimming, the best laid plans only get you so far. The weather and the ocean often have other ideas. Pivoting, she discovered, would become a superpower.
I’m someone who has a plan and I do everything I can to stick to that plan,” she says. But with the enormity of this swim, “You can’t just stick to Plan A. You have to have plan through D.
But as long as I’m within those, I know we’re moving the needle forward.” For instance, she and the crew anticipated swimming most of the coast from north to south, going with the California coastal current. Hard pivot to boating south and swimming north in segments every day. In 900 miles," she says, "I don't have the time, either in the whole summer nor in a day, to be going one mile an hour." She had a fear that doing the swim in segments that went from south to north instead of straight down the coast, “totally changed the spirit of the swim.
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