After high winds and strong currents threatened their swim earlier this week, a New Orleans family made it quickly across an 18-mile strait called âthe Mexican English Channelâ on Sunday. The trio left the island of Cozumel before 5 a.m. and arrived on the Yucatan Peninsula on the Mexican mainland before noon.
To cross the strait in 6 hours and 52 minutes, Mauricio Prieto, 53, Susan Moody Prieto, 49, and their daughter Carolina Prieto, 16, swam as a three-person family relay team, rotating hour-long shifts in the water. Carolina Prieto, an Isidore Newman School junior, wore her green Newman swimcap for the crossing.
The pace was âdefinitely faster than anyone was expecting,â said Mauricio Prieto. They had anticipated it might take up to 16 hours because of formidable Gulf Stream currents, which hit swimmers sideways, making it impossible for anyone to swim straight west from Cozumel to the mainland.
As a woman who won gold medals at two different Summer Olympics, Ashley Tappin-Doussan knows how to push herself to the limit.Â
The waters have been a little choppy over the past few days; the Port of Cozumel was closed Saturday because of strong winds. So the family is a little concerned about the wind, currents and size of waves for their swim. But thatâs not Carolinaâs biggest worry.
âI have a huge fear of jellyfish,â she said Saturday. A few years ago, during a swim off North Carolina, she ended up in the hospital with thousands of jellyfish stings.