PHOTO: Ron Baers
It's impossible to log onto Diana Nyad's web site today, and no wonder. The 61-year old swimmer jumped into the sea last night on her second attempt to become the first person to swim 103 miles from Cuba to Florida and the attention overwhelmed her web site.
A post from her twitter account earlier today apologized: "We are sorry about our slow website loading time! We are getting so much attention the poor old site just can't take it!"
Her first attempt at the swim was more than 30 years ago and she made it about 76 miles before conditions forced her out of the water.
Nyad started her swim at Havana's Hemingway Marina at about 7:45 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday night, according to CNN, which is tracking her swim via GPS and mapping her position regularly.
CNN producer Matt Sloane is live-tweeting the attempt, as is Nyad’s team. Both feeds, along with Nyad’s Facebook page, have been offering encouraging updates.
At about 1 p.m. ET today, Sloan tweeted: “Still going very strong... Shoulder still an issue, a little touch of asthma too..." Around the same time, Nyad’s team reported on Facebook that she was taking Tylenol and using an inhaler. So far, Nyad has shown no signs of giving up.
“Nobody decides the swim is over except me,” she told her team of more than 30 people.
The swim is expected to take 60 hours or so, which would put Nyad on land in Key West on Wednesday morning.
