PROFILE: FREQUENT TRAVELER
Never Give Up Diana Nyad O CCUPAT ION
Long-distance swimmer, author, motivational speaker IDE A L GE TAWAY
France by bicycle LIFE-CHANGING JOURNE Y
First to swim the 110 miles from Cuba to Florida, at age 64
The first time Diana Nyad tried to swim from Cuba to Florida she was a week shy of her 29th birthday and at the peak of fitness. Yet currents swept her off course, and she didn’t make it. She was crushed. Three years earlier Nyad had swum 28 miles around Manhattan in less than eight hours, setting a record. And in 1979, on her 30th birthday, she set a world record for open-water distance swimming, navigating the seas from the Bahamas to Florida, 102 miles, in a 27.5-hour swim. Then Nyad didn’t swim a stroke, she says, for the next 30 years. As she approached her 60th birthday in 2009, she was re-ignited by her dream of swimming from Cuba to Florida. She attempted the Cuba-Florida swim twice in 2011 and once in 2012. A combination of choppy seas, asthma and potentially fatal jellyfish stings ended her quests. But Nyad wouldn’t give up. She readied a crew for another attempt in 2013, at the age of 64. On Aug. 31, 2013, wearing a bodysuit and silicone mask to protect her from jellyfish stings, Nyad leapt off Cuba’s north shore and into the sea. After 53 hours of swimming, she staggered onto the sands of Key West. She’d finally made it. “You should never, ever give up,” she told a cheering crowd on the beach. “You're never are too old to chase your dreams.”
54 ENSEMBLE VACATIONS WINTER 2019
Is the will and desire that got you from Cuba to Florida something you were born with, or did it develop over the course of a lifetime? It’s part of the human condition to have willpower. If we have it too easy, often we never find our limits unless we decide to go out and test those limits for ourselves and dig down to our true grit. I believe all of us have that within us. You made it on your fifth attempt — what do you recall about reaching Florida? That was a 35-year dream, finally staggering up onto that beach. Key West isn’t an easy place to get to, yet people came from all over the place, and they were weeping. I saw what they were seeing: someone who refused to give up. If we don’t give up, we’re going to find our way. Above all is tenacity; engagement and tenacity are the two highest values in life. When I’m engaged, I’m happy. And if I’m tenacious, no matter what I do, it’s OK if I fail. I’m not afraid of failure; I embrace it.
