{"id":6667,"date":"2026-08-12T15:38:55","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T15:38:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=6667"},"modified":"2026-08-12T15:38:55","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T15:38:55","slug":"swimming-the-length-of-california-catherine-breed-nears-the-golden-gate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=6667","title":{"rendered":"Swimming the length of California, Catherine Breed nears the Golden Gate"},"content":{"rendered":"

People tend to have the same question when they learn that Catherine Breed is swimming the length of California, 900 miles in the open ocean from the Oregon border down to Mexico:<\/p>

Read more High school football 2026 preview: PAL Ocean Division<\/a><\/p>\n

What about sharks?<\/p>\n

Breed, a Mill Valley resident and one of the world\u2019s top open-water swimmers, knows there are great whites in the water with her. She isn\u2019t especially concerned.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are there. They are fish,\u201d said the 33-year-old aquanaut on Sunday afternoon, having emerged from the Pacific long enough to share an update on her quest \u2014 never before attempted \u2014 with the 200 enthusiastic supporters who gathered at Westside Regional Park overlooking Bodega Harbor.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality is, I\u2019ve got a 52-foot sailboat that I\u2019m one to two meters from, and another boat on the other side of me,\u201d said Breed, a former NCAA champion at UC Berkeley who holds multiple open water records, including her historic swim of the length of Lake Tahoe, and a 30-mile ultramarathon from the Farallon Islands to the Golden Gate Bridge.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I am tucked in between two very large, noisy vessels that any fish is going to try to avoid.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Carcharodon carcharias<\/em> are a consideration, they\u2019re not as high on her list of concerns as boat propellers, she allowed, \u201cand fear of failure \u2014 fear of not making it to San Diego, especially when I have so publicly put myself out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite plenty of rough days full of big swells and uncooperative currents, Breed is slightly ahead of schedule with Swim California, the expedition\u2019s formal name. As of Sunday, she\u2019d covered 314 miles in her first 40 days.<\/p>

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Beyond the black line<\/h4>\n

Before discussing how the adventure is going, Breed talked about why she undertook it in the first place \u2014 a story that begins with the end of her collegiate swimming career in 2015.<\/p>\n

\u201cI still loved swimming. But I did not want to look at that black line anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finished with pool racing, but not with racing, she joined the famed San Francisco-based Dolphin Club, whose members train in Aquatic Park Cove. When Breed started winning events, her clubmates started urging her to swim the English Channel.<\/p>\n

As a warmup to that iconic crossing, she swam the length of Lake Tahoe, 21.3 miles from Camp Richardson on the south shore to Incline Village, Nev., on the north shore, in the process breaking a 40-year-old record. A year later she swam the iconic, 21-mile strait between England and France in 9 hours, 50 minutes, sans wetsuit.<\/p>

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In 2019, Breed plunged into the chill Irish Sea to freestyle her way across the notoriously churlish North Channel between Ireland and Scotland. Conditions were rough: winds from the north at 10-plus knots, water temperatures hovering just above 50 degrees, lion\u2019s mane jellyfish all about.<\/p>\n

Breed went into the swim hoping to set a Guinness World Record, but finished \u201cvery far from that,\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I learned on that swim is that you cannot take hubris into the ocean. And so I started kind of surrendering to these marathon swims \u2014 realizing I\u2019m not in a pool anymore. I can\u2019t set a time goal and just think I\u2019m going to get it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year, as a tune-up for \u201cthis monster,\u201d said Breed, referring to her 900-mile odyssey, she tackled the treacherous 30.2-mile swim from the Farallon Islands to the Golden Gate Bridge.<\/p>\n

While shark-free, despite the profusion of great whites known to inhabit those seal-rich waters, that epic didn\u2019t lack for drama. Breed spent four hours in the middle of the night powering through a dense \u201cbait ball\u201d of sardines, jellyfish and seabirds. Two miles from the bridge, her core temperature dipping after more than 12 hours in the water without a wetsuit, she told the crew she wanted to stop. With their encouragement, Breed kept going, and broke the record by three minutes.<\/p>\n

Water as sanctuary<\/h4>\n

While she may be an Aries, astrologically speaking, Breed is a piscine creature, very much at home in the water. Growing up in Pleasanton, her family undertook sailing excursions in French Polynesia, New Zealand and Baja, Mexico.<\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up in these waters. I surf these beaches,\u201d she told her audience Sunday. \u201cI spearfish. I love sailing. I come here to trail run, to bike.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy I\u2019m swimming the coast is, I love this place so much.\u201d<\/p>\n

A goal this ambitious, she added, requires \u201ca bigger why.\u201d<\/p>\n