Nyad suffers 2nd jellyfish sting, but still going

HAVANA — Endurance swimmer Diana Nyad suffered another jellyfish sting Saturday night around the halfway point of her bid to make the 103-mile (166-kilometer) crossing from Cuba to Florida, but was still intent on continuing the trip.

Nyad's face and eyes were affected and her crew were trying to determine what kind of jellyfish had delivered the sting, according to online updates posted by her team. She was being treated aboard a support vessel.

"At this moment it appears that Diana wishes to continue," read a message sent on her Twitter account.

It was the second painful sting Nyad has experienced more than 24 hours into her attempt to break her own record for an open-water crossing without a shark cage by about a half-mile (1 km). Earlier Saturday, her assistants reported that she had swam 49 miles since setting out from a Havana marina the previous day.

She also got a visit from a curious shark, though her handlers downplayed the afternoon encounter.

"Around 1pm — and don't everybody get excited here — an Oceanic white tipped shark was spotted near Diana in the midst of the three boat flotilla. ... Rob MacDonald, one of (her safety) divers, swam towards the shark, where they faced off within 10 feet of one another," read a post on Nyad's website.

"I guess he thought I was more aggressive than him, and he turned in the other direction," MacDonald was quoted as saying.

Barracudas were also spotted in her general vicinity.

Without a cage to protect her, Nyad is relying on equipment surrounding her with an electrical field that is harmless but deters most sharks. Her divers are there to gently discourage any who make it through.

Nyad's run-in the previous night with a Portuguese Man o' War, described as "scary," left her with stings on her face, arms and side.

Complaining of difficulty breathing, she received oxygen and a steroid shot from her doctors and tread water while she recovered.

When she resumed swimming her handlers noted that her stroke count had dropped to 48 per minute, down from 52-55, but as the day went on she picked up the pace.

"This afternoon — it is stunning to actually witness — Diana is swimming stronger and stronger," her website read. "Her strokes are up to 50 per minute, she is eating pasta, gobbling bananas, bits of peanut butter sandwiches, along with high-carb & high calorie liquid concoctions."

Her website reported that she seemed to revive significantly after consuming blended chicken soup.

The Los Angeles woman pauses every 45 and 90 minutes to rest and refuel on food that her assistants pass to her in the water, but without getting on the boat.

Not all encounters with marine life were unpleasant.

"At 7:10pm, on the crimson horizon of the Straits of Florida, ten pilot whales emerged in the distance just ahead of Diana," said a tweet.

Her team said a critical phase of the swim was beginning, as an observer on the boat said marathon swimmers are more likely to succeed if they make it through the second night.

Nyad says her strategy for enduring the roughly 60 hours it should take her to swim from Cuba to Florida, testing the limits of human exhaustion at the age of 62, is to focus on one partial goal after another.

"The mental approach has to be to parcel it out. No one could swim the whole thing while thinking about the whole thing," she said on her website. "Till I get a glimpse of the final shore I can't start obsessing on it — it's too far away, too nebulous — I don't know where it is. So I'm going to take it night by day: first get through the nighttime and then get through the daytime, and then the nighttime again, and so on."