Topic: NaplesNews: Naples' Katie Kramer completes Strait of Gibraltar swim

[biggreenarms]

Katie Kramer puts on her Marshall University swim cap and prepares to jump into Naples Bay and swim for six hours in open water on Tuesday, March 18, 2014. The swim is practice for the second week of May when Katie plans to be the youngest American female to swim the Strait of Gibraltar. Sometime after Katie was hit by a car just outside of the YMCA, and scars healed over a bimalleolar fracture in her ankle, she got the idea to swim the 7.7 nautical mile stretch of water that connects Spain to Africa. Kramer plans to use the swim to fundraise for the YMCA Norris Aquatic Center where she works out with the T2 Aquatic Club. After a recent fire which demolished the center, the pool needs a makeover.

NAPLES — A Naples High School graduate could be the youngest American woman to swim the Strait of Gibraltar.

Katie Kramer, 21, completed the 7.8 nautical mile, or 8.9 mile, open water swim on Sunday, according to her text message, a family friend and the Marshall University Swimming & Diving Facebook page.

"Made it! It took four hours, 28 minutes!" Katie Kramer said in a text message to the Daily News this afternoon.

Chelon Perez-Benitoa, a teacher at Naples High School with Katie Kramer’s father, Naples football coach Bill Kramer, told the Daily News that Katie Kramer completed the swim in 4 hours and 28 minutes. Perez-Benitoa said she believed she completed the swim around 8:30 a.m. Eastern time.

“I just ‘spoke’ with Katie via text. She is now the youngest American female to complete the cross of the Strait of Gibraltar. Her official time was just under 4.5 hours,” read a Facebook post on the Marshall University Swimming & Diving page Sunday morning. “She proudly wore her Marshall swim cap. Congrats Katie on a fantastic accomplishment.”

Katie Kramer told the Daily News earlier this month she expected to jump into the water sometime between May 10 and May 16. On Friday, she told her followers on Facebook that the swim “might happen Sunday or Monday.”

“We made it to Tarifa, Spain, yesterday and had a ‘briefing’ this morning for the attempt,” she wrote on Facebook on Friday. “The winds have been very strong for about 10 days, and one swimmer has been waiting it out for that long … There’s a chance we could attempt it together if only one day’s forecast looks good.”

Katie Kramer continued: “I was able to train for a couple of hours off the beach and it was absolutely beautiful! Saw a bit of wildlife, had some serious winds, and have decided to go without a wetsuit.”

Neither Katie Kramer nor Bill Kramer were immediately available for comment Sunday.

Kramer booked her chance to swim the Strait of Gibraltar in October 2012. Earlier this month, she told the Daily News she hoped to swim the Strait of Gibraltar in six hours.

She is swimming to help raise money for the Greater Naples YMCA. Her goal is to raise $50,000 to re-stripe the Norris Aquatic Center pool. Any additional funds will go toward a scoreboard for the center.

According to a May 6 report in the Daily News, she had raised about $4,000 for the swim. Her expenses for the swim will be taken from the donations and everything else will be donated to the YMCA.

“I am so motivated by the fact that this community has been so supportive and that so many people are behind me and (I don’t want) to let them down,” she said in the May 6 report. “I just want to make my school, and my community, and my family proud.”

VIDEO included

http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2014/may/11/katie-kramer-swim-straight-gibraltar-marshall-u/

[cubsrams1]

Katie is an incredible person. Both her and her sister are Yeager Scholars. My wife and I have gotten to know them both during their time at Marshall.  Proud to see young ladies like this represent our great school.