Catherine Breed was in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego, about three days away from becoming the first person ever to swim the entire California coastline, when the captain of her support boat spotted a mako shark roughly 100 yards away.
Mako sharks are considered the fastest sharks in the ocean. But what would have been a terrifying moment for most people hardly fazed Ms. Breed, an endurance athlete who had already encountered hundreds of other sea creatures, powerful storms and unpredictable currents since her ocean odyssey began at the California-Oregon border on July 1.
Ms. Breed called the shark sightings “a small part of the journey.” Still, her crew took no chances. “I think within like 10 seconds of me seeing the shark, she was on the boat,” said the captain, Maisie Bristow.
Ms. Breed completed the roughly 890-mile voyage on Monday morning, stopping about two miles offshore from Tijuana at the California-Mexico border. She celebrated her historic feat with a small group of friends and crew members aboard the 52-foot sailboat that has been her floating home throughout the expedition, called Swim California.
“It feels surreal being done, this has been my entire life for nearly four months,” Ms. Breed said in a text message shortly after finishing.
The entire expedition took over 100 days, with scheduled rest days and dangerous weather keeping Ms. Breed out of the water for 18 of those days. She averaged more than nine miles on the days that she swam.
“She is an incredible athlete with just incredible mental determination,” said Quinn Fitzgerald, the executive director of the World Open Water Swimming Association, or WOWSA, which is ratifying Ms. Breed’s swim. “But with something as ambitious as this in dynamic and unpredictable water, in an El Niño year, it was not a foregone conclusion despite her talent.”
Born and raised in the Bay Area, Ms. Breed has had a passion for swimming since she was young and eventually received 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 swim team.
After completing several marathon swims across the English Channel, around Manhattan and elsewhere, she turned her sights on the California coastline.
“I’m getting to experience parts of the coast that have never been experienced in this way before. No one goes slowly down the California coast,” she told The New York Times in June, before her journey began.
Ms. Breed encountered a wide range of conditions during the swim. Near the north coast of California, she swam in water that was 48 degrees Fahrenheit, shivering badly on the coldest days when she got back on the boat after hours in the water. Near the end of the swim, the water reached a balmy 75 degrees, though Ms. Breed still wore a wet suit for sun protection and took a course of antibiotics to protect against water polluted with sewage.
About a week before reaching the finish line, Hurricane Rachel swept toward Dana Point in Southern California while Ms. Breed was in the water. The wind rose rapidly in a matter of minutes, she recalled.
“The storm came really fast and many hours early, and so we had to call it,” she said. The boat made it safely back to shore, and Ms. Breed rested the day the hurricane hit. She was back in the water the next day.
But perhaps the greatest challenge was the strong and unpredictable ocean currents, in part because of the intense El Niño conditions this year. Only 19 days into the swim, off Cape Mendocino in Northern California, Ms. Breed’s pace slowed to barely 1 mile per hour — compared with her typical 2 to 3 m.p.h. — as she fought a strong current traveling north.
Having already encountered other powerful currents, she and the crew realized that proceeding at a slower pace could double the length of the expedition, making it impossible to finish before winter with their budget and supplies.
Rather than abandon the swim, the team devised a workaround: Ms. Breed reversed course on sections of the swim where there were powerful currents moving against her. Her support boat would take her south from the previous end point, and then Ms. Breed would swim north to that point. This way she still swam every bit of the distance, just not always in the same direction.
Mr. Fitzgerald says this tactic has precedent. In 2025, when the British athlete Ross Edgley swam around Iceland, he also reversed course for some portions. A WOWSA committee decided that reversing directions would not disqualify his swim.
“Ultimately, it was a safety consideration,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “We discussed it again for this swim, and the same determination was reached.”
Two of Ms. Breed’s crew members functioned as official observers for the swim. For each half-hour that she was in the water, they recorded her GPS coordinates, as well as photos and video of the swim. A committee from WOWSA will review the logs before ratifying the swim.
Ms. Breed chronicled her journey on Instagram. She also organized and participated in several community events at different locations along the coast to raise awareness about marine conservation issues.
During their time at sea, Ms. Breed and the crew saw hundreds of whales, dolphins and sea lions. They also encountered four great white sharks and pulled her from the water each time.
“There were amazing moments,” Ms. Breed said. “I’ve had a few whales swim with me, dolphins swim with me. Those moments are really special.”
Ms. Breed quit her job at a medical robotics company before starting the expedition, and she’s not sure what she’ll do next. But there’s one thing she’s especially looking forward to: not having to eat so many calories every day.
“I have had to constantly be eating. I eat in the morning. I eat during my swim. I eat right when I get out,” she said. “I’m actually really looking forward to eating for joy again.”
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