Catherine Breed of Mill Valley, California, has a long list of accomplishments in her swimming career. She holds nine open-water swimming records, including being the first person to swim from San Francisco to Half Moon Bay, representing the University of California Berkeley and U.S. National Teams, just to name a few. Her latest accomplishment is making international headlines: the first human ever to swim the entire length of California’s coast.
The marathon swim began on July 1, 2026, at the Oregon border, and original estimates had her arriving at the Mexico border as late as early November. Breed wrapped it up on Monday though, completing the nearly-900-mile swim ahead of schedule. She averaged 10 miles a day with a support crew following, living on a 52-foot sailboat in between each leg, and when she went to sleep on Sunday night, she had just two miles to complete the swim. She woke up and finished on Monday, arriving at Coronado Beach 111 days after it all began.
“During the swim time, I cannot touch the boat. Then when the swim’s done for the day, we mark that GPS coordinate and we go back to it the next day to resume the stage part of the swim,” she told ABC back in August.
Swim California, the project launched to highlight Breed’s swim, raised awareness for marine life, kelp forests, water quality, and coastal environments.
‘The Tijuana River is a global, national and California crisis,” she told SFGate in one interview, highlighting an issue relevant to that final leg of her swim. “Essentially, raw sewage comes out of the river and spills into the ocean. The pollution zone is about 1.5 miles offshore, so I’ll be finishing around three miles offshore, crossing the border at sea. That’s why no one’s gonna see me finish. The strategy for avoiding the pollution crisis is to 1) avoid, and 2) I’ve started taking prophylactic antibiotics at the guidance of my medical team. Thank goodness it’s at the end.”
