This is an archival story that predates current editorial management.
This archival content was written, edited, and published prior to LAist's acquisition by its current owner, Southern California Public Radio ("SCPR"). Content, such as language choice and subject matter, in archival articles therefore may not align with SCPR's current editorial standards. To learn more about those standards and why we make this distinction, please click here.
We don't know many details at the moment, but a guy named Paul apparently started swimming late last night from the western portion of Catalina Island to the Palos Verdes Peninsula. That's nothing too unusual, as the San Pedro Channel is a popular place for marathon swimmers, but what's pretty cool is that it's being tracked in real time on a Google Maps application.
Back in August, 24-year-old Jen Schumacher Cal State Fullerton grad student swam the 21-mile channel, without any wet suit, in about 9 hours. "I looked back at Catalina. I could not believe I had just swum from that island, to this shore," she wrote in her blog. Only 159 people have successfully completed the channel swim since 1927 as of her swim, she said.
Marty McMahon, 46, a marathon swimmer from Connecticut says the Catalina route is one of the big three. "If I do another swim, it might be five years. Maybe Catalina Island. It's an island 21 miles off Los Angeles. I don't know why, it's considered the Triple Crown [of marathon swimming] — the Channel, Manhattan and Catalina. A lot of Americans like to do those three."
