SACRAMENTO – On Friday, 39 year old Kim Chambers began her attempt at swimming from Sacramento to Tiburon, a town on the edge of the San Francisco Bay. The goal of the swim was to raise funds and awareness for Warrior Canine Connection. Chambers and her team were not certain how long the 93 mile swim would take because nobody had ever completed it alone.
The diversity of the ocean conditions, temperature variation and tidal shifts made this one of the most difficult and taxing marathons ever. Under Channel Swimming Association regulations, Chambers could not be touched, take breaks or wear anything that offered her thermal protection or buoyancy.
If completed, Chambers’ swim would go down as the longest solo, unassisted swim by a woman. After the first 16 hours of her journey, that goal was still within reach. By the time she had been in the water for 24 hours, the weather was so bad that Chambers could barely get herself through the waves.
Adam Skolnick from The New York Times wrote, “Finally, her crew called her over to the boat and told her the weather forecast showed the winds picking up, rather than relenting. It was time to concede.” Chambers’ 24 hour swim, her longest yet, was brought to an end. Her goal of finishing the the swim on September 11th was no longer possible, further proving that unpredictable weather plays a huge part in open water swimming success.
Chambers isn’t done yet, her second swim of 2016 will take place in the Middle East in November; she will be joining an international team to swim across the Dead Sea. Through failures and successes, Chambers continues to reach for swims that will keep her in the record books for years to come.
The “longest solo, unassisted swim by a woman”, or any human, for that matter, is 110 miles from Cuba to Key West, Florida by Diana Nyad in 2013. Even if Chambers had completed the 93 miles, it would not have been a record. Chambers swam just 24 hours. Nyad swam for three days to complete the swim. Nyad previously held the record for open water swimming for over 30 years — a 102 mile swim from the Bahamas to Florida in 1979.
Diana Nyad*
May want to look into the definition of “unassisted”.
“Chambers could not be touched, take breaks or wear anything that offered her thermal protection or buoyancy.”
Hi SwimFan66,
Diana Nyad did swim 111 miles, however, based on English Channel Swimming rules, many consider her swim to be assisted due to the fact that she wore a body suit & face mask and was touched by her crew during her swim. That takes nothing away from her amazing accomplishment, but just changes the way her swim can be defined.
If completed, Chambers 93 mile swim would have passed chloe McCardle’s 126 km(78 mile) record as the longest solo, unassisted swim.