50 Years Ago, I Swam Around Manhattan Island

I’m retired from a career of extreme distance swimming. But I’ll always answer the call of water

Diana Nyad

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Published December 23, 2025

diana nyad smiling and curling her arms in a strength pose

Lifelong swimmer Diana Nyad reflects on her record-breaking swim around Manhattan 50 years ago.

Gregg Segal

Fifty years ago, I relished one of the great adventures of my life — my 28.5-mile swim around Manhattan Island. If people happen to know of my open-water swimming history, they may well associate me with my 2013 crossing from Havana to Key West at 64 years old (a feat which inspired a 2023 film starring Annette Bening and Jodie Foster). But truth be told, even though the Cuba swim was a lifelong quest, and much longer and harder, the Manhattan swim lives in a special place in my memory.

In the 1970s, I was an open-water swimmer who competed on what was then called the World Professional Marathon Swimming Federation circuit. When I came home in ’75 from a summer of various swims in different corners of the world, a friend asked why I would swim in those fairly remote places when the most famous island in the world, Manhattan Island, was right here.

Endurance athletes often feel an emotional connection to a particular mountain, desert, cross-country route. I have been drawn to many bodies of water, starting with the Straits of Florida, between Cuba and Florida, and to the rivers that flow around Manhattan Island. To this day, 50 years later, on my way to landing at JFK Airport, when I peer out the plane window at the expanse of the Hudson, a smile sweeps across my face, recalling that grand adventure of 1975.

A sunny day for a swim

diana nyad swimming near a suspension bridge in foggy conditions

On September 24, 1975, Nyad made her first attempt at an around-Manhattan swim. “The tides from a hurricane down south were not behaving as the charts indicated, so we came back in early October for a second, successful, try,” she says.

Tony Triolo/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images

October 6, 1975, was a crisp, sunny fall day. The starting-off point for the around-Manhattan swim would be Gracie Mansion on the East River. At the peak of high tide, the so-called Hell Gate is a dangerous vortex, as the East River, the Harlem River and the Long Island Sound all converge there. But I would dive in at low tide.

A few days earlier, I had marched over to the 79th Street Boat Basin to find a boat captain to navigate during the swim, work with the tide charts and host my team onboard that day. Each of the wealthy yacht folks sipping cocktails on their tony teak decks at sunset turned me down. One even called the dockmaster to get me thrown out. The last boat I approached didn’t at all resemble the other gorgeous beauties, with their polished mahogany rails. The floorboards were cracked, it badly needed a washing, and the owner, Ed, was wearing khakis stained with motor oil.

But Ed agreed, so we began researching tides and currents, with additional input and permits from the Coast Guard. I was required to get several vaccines for such things as typhoid and diphtheria.

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On the day of the swim, there was no press release. Just one radio reporter and a handful of people out walking that morning. I took the plunge and we headed north.

I breathe to the left, and, as we were going counterclockwise, I had a unique vantage point view of glorious Manhattan all the way around. Tugboats sounded their good-luck horns all the way down to the Statue of Liberty. What a sight that was from the water, looking up at her raised arm of hope. And of course, on that day, the view of the towering World Trade Center loomed large.

That morning radio report must have spread the news that a woman was swimming out there that day, and people took off work to come down to the Hudson seawall to cheer me on.

diana nyad swimming in the hudson river with the world trade center towers visible in the background

Lower Manhattan is the backdrop of this October 1977 photo of Nyad on a practice swim in the Hudson River.

Nancy Moran/Sports Illustrated via Contour RA by Getty Images

I broke both the men’s and women’s speed records that day, completing the swim in 7 hours, 57 minutes. But more than the record, I remember the experience. Afterward, cabbies all over town would yell out their windows: “Hey, Nyad!” Throughout my life since then, strangers tell me they remember hollering good luck from the river’s edge.

A wave of open-water enthusiasts

It astounds me to harken back to the ’70s, my initial era as an open-water swimmer, when a few dozen of us were competing, from Mar del Plata in Argentina to the Bay of Naples in Italy, and then to compare what tens of thousands of swimmers are doing these days in waters all over this blue planet.

There are now myriad associations, from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Cook Strait in New Zealand, that organize the escort boats and crews to ensure the safety of both relay races and solo swimmers. Some swimmers are attracted to the geography itself. Some want to set records. Some want to do one swim over and over. Some swim powerfully, with beautifully smooth technique. Others plod along. But their experiences are no less fulfilling, nor less worthy of respect.

Recently I accompanied Mexico’s Antonio Argüelles, 66, as he tackled the swim from Catalina Island to the California coast. For the first time on a marathon, I wasn’t the swimmer. Antonio is neither a fast nor a beautiful specimen in the water. But I came to tears watching him over those 14 hours — his left arm, then his right arm, lifting over and over again, except for very short hydration breaks. I was terribly moved by the soul of our sport. It’s the grit, the will, the refusal to give up that drives the heart of an open-water swimmer.

The human attraction to water

Every day of the year someone is plunging into a river, lake, pond, sea or ocean. Colorful character Martin Strel faced pirates and vampire fish when he swam the length of the Amazon River in 66 days in 2007. Superstar Sarah Thomas endured the cold of the English Channel for 54 hours during four consecutive crossings in 2019. Lewis Pugh, as the United Nations Patron of the Oceans, has swum in the Antarctic, across Everest glacier lakes and more, all with the goal of advocating for the world’s ocean ecosystems.

diana nyad swimming while surrounded by people and a jet ski

Nyad makes her final strokes to shore in Key West, Florida, on September 2, 2013, having started in Cuba. She became the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without the assistance of a shark cage.

J Pat Carter/AP Photo

I was once a swimmer driven to extreme dreams — the Cuba swim took 52 hours, 54 minutes. It wasn’t only about the hardcore sport of it all. I was thrilled to be stroking across the curvature of the earth as I looked up at the billion stars from out in the Gulf Stream on a summer night.

Despite being retired for the final time now, I know I will always be a swimmer. I swoon to feel the glide across the surface. I meditate with the metronome counting of strokes, the singing of songs. I have never found another activity to tap my inner and outer strength as swimming does.

How magical is it that my surname, Nyad (naiad in the original Greek), means “water nymph”? To swimmers everywhere, I wish you joyful and meaningful immersion.

AARP essays share a point of view in the author’s voice, drawn from expertise or experience, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AARP.

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Diana Nyad’s memoir is titled Find a Way (Knopf, 2015). She leads, with Bonnie Stoll, a walking initiative called EverWalk. She is a speaker, writer, linguist, and the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without the aid of a shark cage.

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