Monterey reassesses priorities for next year
Former Cal swimmer Catherine Breed, a 27-year-old from Pleasanton, becomes the fifth female to complete the 25-mile swim across the Monterey Bay and did so in record time
Coronavirus has damaged the budget, forced officials to take closer look at goals, future projects.
MONTEREY >> Pleasanton’s Catherine Breed emerged from the chilly Monterey Bay water and her legs temporarily gave out. She stumbled and fell to her knees, which were immediately bloodied by the coarse sand at San Carlos Beach in Monterey.
Twelve hours and 53 minutes after she first stepped into the ocean and 25 miles away from her starting point at Twin Lakes State Beach in Santa Cruz, the 27-year- old successfully became just the fifth woman to ever complete a solo swim across the Monterey Bay on Tuesday. She did so in record time, breaking Patti Bauernfeind’s 2014 mark of 13 hours.
Breed turned to her backside and remained seated as she caught her breath, too numb to realize people walking up to congratulate her.
“I was proud of myself for breaking the record and, honestly, I was just relieved to be out of the water,” she said Wednesday, noting she still couldn’t raise her sore arms above her shoulders.
In addition to Bauernfeind, Breed joined Cindy Cleveland (1980), Kim Rutherford (2014) and Amy Gubser (2017) as the only women to complete the swim.
Rutherford and Gubser were on hand to witness the latest crossing. Bauernfeind tracked the tail- end of Breed’s swim on
line and was cheering from her residence in Dublin.
“It is a sisterhood,” Bauernfeind said. “The whole community is amazing and supportive. And records are made to be broken. Cat is fast, talented and has done other big swims. It always comes down to conditions. No two swims are the same, so you kind of train for the worst
and hope for the best. But I’m so happy for her and her swim.”
Breed, a former swimmer at Amador Valley High and Cal, got a scare at a recent training session in Aptos after a Great White swam past her and her training partner, Ricardo Urbina.
She said the fear of a shark attack is omnipresent in open water swimming, but she knows the
chance of it happening is incredibly rare. Jellyfish were her worst enemy on her latest trek.
She elected to attempt her bay crossing at night to avoid heavy afternoon winds and choppier water.
Breed fueled up for epic journey by downing some oatmeal and over-easy eggs at 7 p.m. Monday. She arrived at Santa Cruz Yacht Club a half hour later.
There she put on her shark shield and shark repellent band, and liberally applied zinc, which also contained jellyfish repellent. At 9 p.m., she put in her ear plugs, pulled down her goggles and stepped into the 59- degree water in pitch black.
“I couldn’t hear anything and it was so black, so I couldn’t see anything,” Breed said. “It was a weird place to be with no senses.”
She wasn’t alone though. Urbina was on a paddle board nearby, and in the distance was a 35-foot boat that included her mother, Robin, Gubser and her husband, Greg, Rutherford, and skipper Brian Tom.
Breed had nerves, but she was soothed by the sounds of porpoises a few minutes into her journey. At that point she knew she was going to have a good swim. Still, she had a long night ahead of her.
“At the four-hour mark, I settled in and wasn’t so nervous,” said Breed, noting she was taking 10- to 20-second feeding breaks every half hour.
She said the cold water was glowing with bioluminescence, making it a surreal experience, and she drew inspiration from the women who made this swim before her. Normally thoughts are racing through Breed’s head on long open-water swims, but she had one saying that she continually repeated to herself, “Get to 6 a.m.”
Reaching daylight wasn’t her only motivation. Her swim raised roughly $2,000 for Diversity in Aquatics, a nonprofit that helps bring aquatic programs to underserved communities in an effort to reduce drowning rates.
When daylight finally arrived, so did the jellyfish and a thick morning fog. She was stung all over her body, but primarily her faces and arms. She later counted 55 stings total.
She braved her way through kelp, swam over a large sunfish, and even through whale poop, prompting her mom to comment on camera while documenting the swim.
“It was gross, brown and murky, but at that point I wasn’t stopping for anything,” she said.
She was rapidly closing in on Monterey. Greg Gubser replaced Urbina aboard the paddle board and guided Breed to shore.
She had friends waiting to greet her, but it was all a blur. She was mentally and physically drained.
Because her mother was still aboard the boat, she was unable to see her daughter fall to the sandy beach. She never doubted her daughter once throughout the trek.
“Even when she’s scared, she has such physicality and confidence in herself,” Robin said. “It goes beyond what is norm.”
Previous Monterey Bay crossings September 1980: Cindy Cleveland, 15:21:00 (first trans- bay swim) from Cowell Beach to Lovers Beach (24 Miles) August 2014: Patti Bauernfeind, 13:00:00 (fastest solo crossing) from SC Harbor to San Carlos Beach (25 Miles) September 2014: Kim Rutherford, 22:06:00 (first South to North) from San Carlos Beach to SC Harbor (25 Miles) September 2017: Amy Gubser, 17:49:05 from SC Harbor to San Carlos Beach (25 Miles) June 2019: John Zemaitis, 17: 32:51 (first male solo marathon) from SC Harbor to San Carlos Beach (25 Miles)