Woman Ends Cuba-Florida Swim in U.S. Waters

MIAMI — An exhausted Australian distance swimmer, battered by a stormy night inside a shark cage, ended her attempt to swim unassisted from Havana to Key West, Fla., when she reached U.S. territorial waters Sunday.

Susie Maroney, who was trying to become the first person to swim solo across the Florida Straits, was about 10 miles off the Florida Keys when she was pulled from the water, dehydrated and disoriented after reaching her revised goal of U.S. waters.

“She just made it,” her mother, Pauline Maroney, told Associated Press by phone before rushing to greet her 21-year-old daughter.

Just before her daughter stopped her swim, Pauline Maroney said: “She’s quite dehydrated. She’s sort of hallucinating, keeps thinking people are giving her different times to stop. She’s been vomiting, and we had to put her out in open sea, which was another concern.”

In an impromptu news conference at the Lower Florida Health Systems Hospital, where she was taken for a checkup, Maroney said she believed she had accomplished her goal.

“Yeah, oh, definitely,” she said. “We had an official observer.”

Maroney said she did not plan to try the Cuba-U.S. swim again. “I don’t think I’ll do it again; once is enough.”

Asked how she was feeling, she said: “Just really exhausted at the moment, really sore all over.” She added that she thought the salt water had affected her breathing.

“The worst part was the beginning,” she said, “the first six hours” of the marathon swim, during which she was seasick. And Saturday night she said she was in a storm with lightning and thunder that “just wouldn’t stop.”

Swim coordinator Hugh Rule said a storm blew up about 9 p.m. EDT Saturday with no warning and lasted six hours, creating very difficult conditions.

“She was getting beat up from one side to the other,” Rule said. “She was getting bashed up against the side of the mesh cage. The conditions were precisely what we didn’t want to have.”

By the time Maroney came aboard one of the escort boats, she had made it more than nine-tenths of the way across the Straits.

“She made it to the United States’ waters, to the 12-mile limit,” said Cheri Cohen, owner of the boat Fatal Attraction, which plucked Maroney out of the water and ferried her to Stock Island.

Capt. Keith Cohen said that Tom Hextel of the World Marathon Assn. had verified the 88.5-mile distance and declared it a world record for swimming solo from Cuba to the United States.

Maroney said her immediate plans include rest. “I decided I’m going to have a little bit of a respite,” she said, but added that she also plans to swim another marathon.

She holds the record for the fastest double crossing of the English Channel by a woman, in 17 hours and 15 minutes.

Maroney started her trip from Havana early Saturday.

After 20 miles, Maroney decided to swim outside her shark cage because the waves were tossing it around, “causing too much water to go down her throat,” said Connie Pignatiello, president of a company that owns the Fatal Attraction.

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While Maroney was swimming outside the 28-by-8-foot shark cage Saturday afternoon, “a 40-foot whale swam right by and she was real excited,” Pignatiello said.

Calmer seas let Maroney use the cage, keep up a steady pace and swim 42 miles by Saturday night, Pignatiello said.

Maroney was not allowed to grab the side of the cage, touch the bottom or get on the boat for a break. She did not sleep, instead treading water while taking breaks in the cage.

Of more than 50 tries by swimmers to cross the Straits that have been recognized by the Swimming Hall of Fame, none has been successful.