She’s Set to Swim the Entire California Coast (Sharks Permitting)

SAN FRANCISCO — Early one morning next month, Catherine Breed, 33, will walk into the ocean just north of the California-Oregon border and start swimming south. Between 80 and 126 days later — if things go as planned — she will reach the California-Mexico border, becoming the first person ever to swim the entire length of California.

To attain this audacious goal, she will have to swim about 900 miles along rugged coastline in the open Pacific, vulnerable to great white sharks, elephant seals, venomous jellyfish, storms, currents, hypothermia and rhabdomyolysis, a dangerous condition in which muscles disintegrate from overexertion.

Like a lunar mission, Breed’s expedition, called Swim California, has a flexible, weather-dependent launch date. Breed and a crew of four will eat, sleep and live aboard a 52-foot sailboat, sheltering at night in coves and harbors when possible. Except on periodic rest days, she will swim for five to eight hours each day, starting where she stopped the previous day. On clear, calm days, with a neutral current, she’ll cover 10 to 15 miles. To have the swim ratified by the World Open Water Swimming Association, the crew will upload a daily observer’s log that records air and water temperature, wind speed and direction, Breed’s stroke rate, wildlife incidents and geotagged photos for every 30 minutes she’s in the water.

I met Breed on a recent Wednesday outside the Parnassus campus of the University of California, San Francisco. In her day job at Intuitive Surgical, which she will quit to make the swim, she trains doctors to use a robotic surgical system. One of these physicians is Dr. Jonathan Carter, who is acting as a consulting physician for Swim California.

The three of us walked to one of Breed’s favorite lunch spots. Breed was tired, and as she told us about her schedule, I could see why: Each week, she lifts weights three times, swims roughly 40,000 yards (more than 22 miles), works a full-time job and spearheads the logistical planning for her expedition.

“Yeah, long days,” she said. “I’m not having, like, any crazy meltdowns, but I definitely have moments.” She paused. “You know when you see a frayed power line? That’s how I feel on the inside sometimes.”

A Team Effort

Breed likes to describe Swim California in the first-person plural: Not I’m swimming California, but we’re swimming California. In addition to Carter, her support team includes an athletic trainer, a nutritionist, a lawyer, a fundraiser, a publicist, a logistics coordinator, a kayaker and a boat pilot who has circumnavigated the world. Her boyfriend, Dave Monachello, will shadow the boat’s southward progress in a sprinter van, resupplying the crew at sea with fresh vegetables, good paperbacks, pints of ice cream, spare boat-engine parts and whatever else they need. At a dozen key locations, Breed will come ashore for public education events meant to raise money for and awareness of ocean conservation issues.

As we walked back to the hospital after lunch, Breed gave herself a sort of pep talk.

“When I get to think about it, it’s such a big, stressful thing,” she said. “But I’m also like, I get to take four months where all I really have to do is put my face in the ocean for five hours a day and then hang out on a boat — like, that’s not the worst way to spend four months.”

That evening, Breed held a fundraising event at the private, 166-year-old Olympic Club in downtown San Francisco. Those present were from a wide range of ages, including seniors and elementary schoolers.

Former UC Berkeley, US Team Swimmer

Breed walked the audience through some basics of her biography. She was born and raised in the Bay Area, and her childhood was full of sailing and swimming. She got a scholarship to swim at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was a pre-med major, a two-time all-American swimmer and a member of the U.S. national team.

After graduating in 2015, friends introduced her to the Dolphin Club, an open water swimming and boating club in San Francisco. It soon became clear that she could maintain the speed she had honed in college for many miles. In 2017, she completed her first long swim attempt, 21.3 miles across the long axis of Lake Tahoe, in 8 hours, 56 minutes, breaking a record set by a man that had stood since 1987.

More successful marathon swims followed: 20.8 miles across the English Channel, 21.7 miles in the North Channel between Scotland and Ireland, the 28.5-mile 20 Bridges Swim Around Manhattan. Soon, she began hearing from strangers who were inspired by her feats, including a man who told her that he started swimming again and had lost 50 pounds.

Instead of pursuing medical school, she decided she would make her impact as a swimmer.

When people learn what Breed is doing, they want to know the expedition’s cost (around $500,000, from individual donors and corporate sponsors), what she will eat for breakfast (chia pudding, overnight oats), whether they can join her for part of the swim (no), and if she will be posting and livestreaming any of the swim (yes, on Instagram and YouTube.)

Goals: Promote Ocean Conservation, Inspire Others, Set Records

But perhaps the two most common questions are: Why are you doing this? And what about the sharks?

Pacing the stage, Breed described multiple motives: to promote ocean conservation, to inspire others, to set a record, to have an extraordinary adventure.

Breed presented her marathon swims not just as physical feats, but as stages in an unfinished journey of self-knowledge. After her record-smashing swim at Lake Tahoe, she expected to set a record during the North Channel crossing. Instead, windy conditions slowed her down, and it took far longer than she expected.

“A really important lesson on this swim was, you cannot bring hubris to the ocean,” she said. “You can’t bring your plan to the ocean, because she’s going to be like, ‘Ha-ha, that’s funny.’”

Near the end of her talk, Breed drew a distinction between risk takers and risk “technicians.” The former act on impulse and hope to get lucky; the latter strategize to minimize risks. During Swim California, Breed will wear a small device that creates a magnetic field meant to confuse a shark’s sensory system. Someone in a kayak or a small boat will always be near her, and at known hot spots, multiple scanners will watch for sharks and sea life. “So I promise I’m not going to get bit by a great white shark,” she said at one point, provoking nervous laughs.

Surviving Jellyfish and ‘Bait Balls’

One of Breed’s worst swimming experiences happened in 2025, when she was attempting a crossing of about 30 miles between the Farallon Islands and the Golden Gate Bridge. She started at 10:45 p.m., swimming through the night to avoid ships and catch an assist from the tides.

She swam through masses of jellyfish so dense they got inside her swimsuit. She spent hours in a “bait ball,” a cluster of small fish that can attract birds from above and predators from below.

Near the Golden Gate Bridge, having already swum more than 25 miles with no wet suit in 56 degree water, she was shivering, miserable and borderline hypothermic.

She talked with her support crew only during the “feeds” that marathon swimmers are allowed each half-hour by the World Open Water Swimming Association. She could not touch the boat, but her support team could toss her liquid nutrients and talk briefly. On the boat was Amy Gubser, who in 2024 became the first person to swim the same crossing in the opposite direction. Gubser was unfazed by the intensity of Breed’s emotions.

“There were tears, some cursing, but she was never really disrespectful,” Gubser recalled. What distinguished Breed was not the absence of doubt, fear and frustration, but her capacity to continue despite these emotions. “We’re just like, all right, that’s how you feel,” Gubser said. “In half an hour, we’ll talk about it again.”

By Breed’s next feed, she felt ready to quit. She looked at the Golden Gate Bridge, a few miles away, and thought about Swim California. If she could not complete this swim, people would have questions about a vastly longer one. Suddenly, she dove below the water, and as she resurfaced, screamed.

She completed the swim, breaking the previous record by three minutes.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Nick Romeo/Gabriela Bhaskar

c.2026 The New York Times Company

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