62-Year-Old Woman Attempting To Swim From Cuba To Florida Again

Diana Nyad is convinced this time will be different. The sixty-two-year-old endurance athlete has failed on three separate occasions to swim from Havana, Cuba to Key West, Florida, but as she plunged into the water a few hours ago, she was full of optimism that the weather and chance would finally cooperate. In the past, she’s never been able to get both to line up.

On Nyad’s first attempt in 1978, wind increased the waves to dangerous levels. She tried to push forward, but she was delirious and banged up before she even hit the halfway point. Last year, she tried the swim twice. The first effort was sunk by an 11-hour asthma attack, and the second was derailed after a jellyfish attack.

According to CNN, if all goes according to plan this time around, Nyad should reach Key West on Tuesday, some sixty hours after she first began the treacherous one hundred and three mile swim. That’s one day earlier than her team initially plotted out, but after all involved woke up to beautiful weather this morning and wonderful forecasts for the next few days, it was decided she should begin Saturday rather than Sunday.

When Nyad was a little girl, she dreamed of swimming from Cuba to the United States while on a family vacation in Havana. More than fifty years later, she could finally get her wish.