New YORK: An attempt by British-Australian woman Penny Palfrey to swim unassisted from Cuba to Florida ended in failure early on Sunday after she had to be pulled out of the water unable to cope with a strong ocean current.
“Penny is presently on her escort boat being taken care of by her crew,” the team said.
The mother of three and grandmother of two had been seeking to become the first to complete the historic feat without a protective cage.
The 49-year-old, who left the Cuban capital of Havana shortly after sunrise on Friday, had already covered three-quarters of her itinerary when she ran into trouble.
She was just 43 kilometers (27 miles) south of Key West, her final destination.
But experts say currents in the Florida Straits can be too strong for a human to fight, and if a swimmer miscalculates, he or she can end up being dragged away from land rather than getting closer to it.
By making it this far, Palfrey has already broken her own world record of the longest unassisted ocean swim of 59.64 nautical miles (110.45 kilometers), her team members said.
The 166-kilometre trek from Havana to Key West is considered risky and fraught with unexpected dangers even by the best of athletes.
Earlier, Palfrey’s support team reported that she had suffered “constant” jellyfish stings overnight and that her mouth was “very sore and painful” while a school of hammerhead sharks was briefly sighted below her.
Team members said she was averaging speeds of 4.8 kilometers (three miles) an hour when she was in her best shape on Saturday, but slowed down to about 3.2 kilometers (two miles) an hour on Sunday as she grew tired.
Before diving into the water at Havana’s Hemingway International Yacht Club Palfrey told reporters she was “a little excited, a little nervous.”
Palfrey was seeking to accomplish the feat in a “call for friendly relations between the peoples of the United States and Cuba,” according to the Cuban foreign ministry.
But even Cuba’s national commissioner for swimming, Rodolfo Falcon, sounded a note of caution saying, “sea conditions are not similar to the pool, where she trained for many hours.”
“At sea, the salt water weighs you down,” said Falcon, who won a silver medal at the 1996 Olympics.
Two yachts, a kayak and a boat were part of Palfrey’s support team. The vessels carried equipment to ward off sharks.
Palfrey is among the most accomplished open-water swimmers in the world and has completed swims in the Caribbean and Pacific without a shark cage. (AFP)
