Most people would call it a long swim if they made it across a lake.
Catherine Breed just swam the entire coast of California.
All of it. From the Oregon border to the Mexico border. Roughly 900 miles of cold, rough Pacific Ocean.
It took her 111 days. And according to the reporters who followed her, nobody had ever done it before.
From Oregon to Mexico
Breed is 33 years old. She grew up in Pleasanton, in the San Francisco Bay Area, and lives in Mill Valley, The Press Democrat reported.
She started on July 1, in the Pacific waters at the California-Oregon line.
Then she swam south. Day after day. Week after week.
She swam past the remote North Coast. Under the Golden Gate Bridge. Across Monterey Bay. Along Big Sur. Around Point Conception.
And then down through Southern California, all the way to the border with Mexico.
The project had a simple name: Swim California.
The Press Democrat described it as believed to be the first completed staged swim of California’s full coastline, with formal ratification still subject to a review of its records.
Like a Half Ironman Every Day
Breed didn’t do it all in one go. Nobody could.
She swam in stages, averaging about 10 miles a day, according to NBC 7 San Diego and Reuters.
GPS waypoints linked each day’s swim to the next, and observers documented her progress, The Press Democrat reported.
She slept, ate and lived aboard her team’s 52-foot sailboat, the Catalyst, according to Reuters and NBC 7.
The sailboat and a motorized dinghy stayed beside her in the water the whole way.
She described the effort in a social media post.
“It is like doing a trail 50k or a half Ironman every day for about 110 days,” Breed said.
Every single day. For almost four months.
To keep going, she ate more than 6,000 calories a day, her spokesperson William Rinehart told Reuters.
Cold Water, Big Waves and a Current Going the Wrong Way
The ocean did not make it easy.
NBC 7 reported she faced water below 50 degrees, dangerous currents, high winds and waves up to 7 feet.
She described those waves as feeling like swimming “in a washing machine,” The Guardian reported.
Then there was the current. Off Northern California, it ran north, straight against her, made stronger by Super El Niño conditions in the Pacific, Reuters reported.
“The current is quite literally going against us the entire way,” Breed told San Diego’s KPBS, according to The Guardian.
Some stretches were nearly impossible to push through. So the team got creative.
Breed sometimes reversed course and backtracked north on some stretches to make up for southbound sections that had become nearly impassable, Rinehart told Reuters.
She also spent 18 days out of the water, for planned rest stops and for breaks forced by bad weather.
And yes, there were sharks. Her crew pulled her out of the water several times when sharks were spotted, Reuters reported.
Whales Beneath Her, Plastic Beside Her
Breed wasn’t just swimming for a record.
She wanted people to see the coast the way she sees it, and to want to protect it.
In her updates from the water, she described a humpback mother and calf passing beneath her, and swimming among dolphins, The Press Democrat reported.
“You guys, this is like swimming in an aquarium out there,” she told a crowd of supporters at Bodega Harbor back in August.
But she saw the other side, too. Floating litter. Trash where there should only be ocean.
“I have spent my life loving this coast. Swimming it gave me hundreds of new reasons to protect it,” Breed said.
“I saw whales beneath me, plastic beside me, and communities giving their time to look after these places.”
“Swimming Through Sewage”
Ironically, the hardest water came at the very end.
Near Imperial Beach, right by the U.S.-Mexico border, she had to swim near the mouth of the Tijuana River, where there is a sewage and pollution crisis.
“It is some of the dirtiest water in the United States, if not the world,” she said.
She took antibiotics to protect herself and stayed more than two miles offshore, The Press Democrat reported. It still felt awful.
At one point she told her crew she felt like she was “swimming through sewage.”
And it made her think about what people are actually afraid of in the ocean.
“Everyone’s been so fixated on sharks,” Breed said in a video on Instagram.
“We are so scared about these animals that live in the ocean and have no interest in us,” she said.
In the same video, she added that “we are more fearful about that than we are about the damage and destruction that we are causing to our own home.”
The Finish at Coronado
On Monday afternoon, Oct. 19, Breed swam ashore at Coronado Beach for a ceremonial finish.
A crowd was waiting for her with cheers, hugs and flowers, NBC 7 reported.
“So thrilled to see people, but not surprised because Californians and ocean lovers and people really showed up for this swim,” she told NBC 7.
They showed up, she said, for “what it meant for this coastline and for inspiring women and girls to get out there. It was amazing.”
Through it all, Rinehart told Reuters, she stayed healthy and avoided jellyfish stings and other injuries.
Breed was honest about how hard it was.
“For months, I measured my world in the next few miles,” she said. “This was harder than I expected, and there were days when I was exhausted and overwhelmed.”
“Every message from someone following along, every person who came out to cheer, helped me get back in the water,” she said.
“I’m still taking in what we’ve done, but mostly I keep thinking about how grateful I am. So many people helped me keep going.”
Why She Did It
This was not Breed’s first big swim. She swam the English Channel and the North Channel between Ireland and Scotland, and from the Farallon Islands to the Golden Gate Bridge, The Press Democrat reported.
She even stepped away from her career in medical technology sales to take on Swim California.
But she says this one was about more than her.
The women on her boat were a big part of the story. Experienced captains and crew handled navigation, safety and life at sea, The Press Democrat reported.
“I hope a girl watching this sees a future she hadn’t considered for herself,” Breed said.
“I was surrounded by women who could navigate a boat, make a tough call and find something to laugh about afterward.”
“I want more girls to have that kind of confidence in themselves and in each other.”
And she has one small request for the rest of us.
“I hope people who followed this journey choose one place they love and find a way to take care of it,” she said.
Nine hundred miles. One hundred and eleven days. One swimmer and a boat full of people who believed she could do it.
What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever pushed yourself to finish? Tell us in the comments.
