Diana Nyad ‘moving in the right direction’ on Cuba-Fla. swim

Video: Diana Nyad continues swim from Havana to Key West

Open in new window

2. Closed captioning of: Diana Nyad continues swim from Havana to Key West

   Advertise | AdChoices

   >> this half hour with the question, will the fourth time be the charm for swimmer diana nyad . mark potter in miami following her progress. mark, good morning.

   >> reporter: good morning to you, lester. diana nyad has been swimming out there in the ocean for more than a day and a half now. she ran into a storm last night but still heading to key west , hoping to make it all the way this time.

   >> after her first full day on the water, diana nyad still and to be in good spirits and going strong on the 103 mile swim from havana to key west . this is nyad 's fourth attempt to swim across the florida strait , something no one has done before. she first tried in 1978 but bad weather pushed her off course. just last summer she made two more attempts after one of them was cut short by asthma, she sat down with our own natalie morales .

   >> you know, it was such a shame , natalie. i was so worried. i wasn't even sore. after 30 hours of swimming, no soreness.

   >> now the 63-year-old is trying again followed by a team providing nutrition and support, using a kayak with a device that emits an electric field hopefully to keep sharks at bay. the biggest problem so far have been jellyfish which rise to the surface at night. members of her crew say she has been stung repeatedly on her neck, lips, forehead. only the rising sun brings relief. on her behalf one crew member tweeted, today is more like swimming. i don't know what you would call last night, probably surviving. it is estimated it will take 60 hours for nyad to complete the swim, which she is determined to finish.

   >> i am not going to quit until i stand on the shore in florida. i'm going to make it across.

   >> reporter: now, if she overcomes all the obstacles, stays on schedule, stays on course, she'll arrive in key west tomorrow to make history. lester.

   >> mark potter , thanks. mark sullen ger is dine nyad 's operations chief. he's with us on a phone in a boat right next to diana . good morning, thanks for coming on.

   >> good morning. thanks for having us.

   >> we saw the tweet referring to all hell broke lose. she was off course. how do things look at this hour.

   >> actually things couldn't look better right now. the sun is up. diana is in, what we call the streamer, which is what she follows. her stroke looks good. we're moving in the right direction.

   >> do you have your eyes on her right now?

   >> i'm looking at her as we speak.

   >> when you look at her, can you tell how she's doing just by her stroke? do you see her face? does she give you indications of how she's feeling?

   >> actually we can. we time diana 's stroke count. that's how many times she strokes per minute. and a good stroke count for her is 50. she's on that number right now.

   >> so when you look at her health and the weather conditions, what's your anticipation of when she will -- whether she'll complete this swim and whether she might hit land.

   >> that's a good question. unfortunately it's one that's difficult to answer accurately. there are so many variables involved in this with mother nature , as you know, that it's really tough for us to give you an exact time, even an exact place because so many different things can happen. that's why this year we're using the tracker system, which people can follow on diana nyad .com to see where we are, how we're going, and where we might land and when.

   >> i know the showstopper in the past has been these jellyfish stings, including the box jellyfish that releases toxins. that kind of knocked her out of it last tithe time. how is she handling the jellyfish this time around?

   >> the first night we had a rough night . she had several jellyfish stings as did some of our shark team members who are in the water all the time. we have the foremost jellyfish expert with us this time around from the university of hawaii , who got to diana immediately and administered the proper care for those jellyfish stings. she did the diana nyad thing and powered through that night.

   >> we just put a picture up of her wearing it looks like a mask and a full suit on that was supposed to protect her from jellyfish. has that been effective at all?

   >> that's been super effective. that's something that diana has worked very hard on developing over the last year. unfortunately, you need every piece of skin of your body covered to have full protection against these things, and there's no way really to cover your lips. the stings she encountered the first night were on her lips.

   >> mark, quickly before you go, i know she sings to keep her occupied. what is she singing these days? what does she like?

   >> yesterday we had an awesome day. the weather was incredible. we got to see that classic diana nyad strokes. she came up and was actually singing beatles songs to the crew to lighten everybody up. it's an amazing thing to see.

   >> i wonder if it was " yellow submarine ." mark, good luck and tell her good luck.

   >> thanks for having us and thanks for your support. as

   Show transcript