Other swimming feats
•1978: Walter Poenisch, an Ohio baker, claimed to have made the swim using flippers and a snorkel. Critics say there was insufficient independent documentation to verify his claim.
•1997: Australian Susie Maroney successfully swam the Strait with a shark cage, which besides protection from the predators, has a drafting effect that pulls a swimmer along.
• 2012: Australian Penny Palfrey swam 79 miles toward Florida without a cage before strong currents forced her to abandon the attempt.
• June 2013: Palfrey's countrywoman Chloe McCardel made it 11 hours and 14 miles before jellyfish stings ended her bid.
Looking dazed and sunburned, U.S. endurance swimmer Diana Nyad staggered onto the shore of Key West Monday, becoming the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without the help of a shark cage.
The 64-year-old Nyad swam up to the beach just before 2 p.m., about 53 hours after she began her journey in Havana on Saturday. As she approached, spectators waded into waist-high water and surrounded her, taking pictures and cheering her on.
“I have three messages. One is, we should never, ever give up. Two is, you’re never too old to chase your dream. Three is, it looks like a solitary sport, but it is a team,” she said on the beach.
“I have to say, I’m a little bit out of it right now,” Nyad said. Her lips swollen by jellyfish stings and her mouth bruised by face gear she wore to protect her from the venomous tentacles, she gestured and simply said “seawater.”
People from around the world tracked Nyad on her website and rooted for her on social media.
President Barack Obama and Florida Gov. Rick Scott took to Twitter to congratulate her.
“Never give up on your dreams,” Obama tweeted.
Her team said she had been slurring her words while she was out in the water. She was on a stretcher on the beach and received an IV before she was taken by ambulance to a hospital.
“I just wanted to get out of the sun,” she said.
Despite a Sunday-night storm that brought winds of up to 23 knots and bouts with nausea, Nyad made good time in the first half of the swim, with about 51 strokes per minute. A favorable current helped her average about two miles per hour, and by about 5 a.m. Monday she was on course to conquer her dream.
“The greatest variable here is the extension of human endurance,” said her navigator, John Bartlett, who was leading her escort boat, the Voyager. “How long will it take her to make those last 100 strokes at the end, and all the ones from here to then?”
For Nyad, the journey began 35 years ago in 1978, when she first tried with a shark cage but came up short. She gave up swimming for decades, but conquering the Florida Straits continued to eat away at her. So in her 60s, she plunged back into the water and trained to regain her old form.
With a good marketing team that helped raise the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to support such an endeavor, she made her second attempt in 2011. It was hampered by shoulder pain and an asthma attack. Months later, jellyfish stings ended a third attempt.
Last year, she tried for a fourth time. The jellyfish got her again. She was pulled from the water, her face badly swollen.
This time at dusk and night hours when the jellyfish and other stinging creatures are most prevalent, she wore a jellyfish protection suit. The first night she wore a specially designed prosthetic face mask that also covered her lips, but it made it difficult to swim. The second night, she used a protection cream, dubbed “Sting Stopper,” that was created by jellyfish expert Angel Yanagihara and the University of Hawaii.
A diver also was in the water with Nyad to scout for jellyfish. If any were seen, the mask would go on, according to her website. The divers were part of a 35-person support crew that included kayakers, accompanying her in a flotilla of five boats.
“It’s historic, marvelous,” said Jose Miguel Diaz Escrich, the Hemingway Marina commodore who helped organize the Cuba side of Nyad’s multiple attempts.
“I always thought she could do it given her internal energy, her mental and physical strength, her will of iron,” said Diaz Escrich, whom Nyad has described as a longtime friend.
“More than the athletic feat, she wants to send a message of peace, love, friendship and happiness … between the people of the United States and Cuba,” he said.
Doctors traveling with Nyad were worried about her slurred speech and her breathing, but they didn’t intervene, according to Nyad’s website.
Most long-distance swimmers have never even attempted the swim, with or without a shark cage.
Nyad’s latest journey began Saturday morning when she jumped from the seawall of the Hemingway Marina into the warm waters off Havana. She stopped from time to time for nourishment, but she never left the water.
The support team accompanying her had equipment that generated a faint electrical field around her, which was designed to keep sharks at bay. A boat also dragged a line in the water to help keep her on course.
Sumaya Haddin, of Miami, had been tracking Nyad’s swim before her family’s trip to Key West this weekend. She was surprised to see Nyad’s flotilla from a parasail off Smather’s Beach on Monday morning. She thought Nyad wasn’t due for another day.
“You couldn’t see her, you could just see the boats. It was very exciting,” she said.
Haddin said Nyad still had her fighting spirit when she got to the beach. “Getting into the ambulance, she had her peace sign up, her fist up. She was still fired up.”
Nyad first came to national attention in 1975 when she swam the 28 miles around the island of Manhattan in just under eight hours. In 1979 she swam the 102 miles from North Bimini, Bahamas, to Juno Beach, Fla., in 27.5 hours.
Nyad is also an author of three books, a motivational speaker and has been a reporter and commentator for NPR.
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