Katie Pumphrey, the Baltimore ultramarathon open water swimmer and artist, embarked on her third swim across the English Channel at around 1:30 a.m. UK local time this morning, July 30, 2025.
The public can follow her journey via live tracker at swimkatie.com, and her team will post updates on social media.
Pumphrey, who lives and works in Baltimore, began her swim in England and will finish in France. The English Channel is 34 kilometers (21 miles) from point to point. Pumphrey plans an “S”-shaped route to account for changing tides and currents. This makes the course much longer.
She swam the English Channel for the first time in 2015, and took 14 hours, 19 minutes to swim from England to France. In 2022 Pumphrey completed her second English Channel swim, finishing in a time of 13 hours, 44 minutes.
The English Channel separates England and France, and the swim across this 34-kilometer (21-mile) body of water is one of the world’s most significant and momentous marathon swim. It requires meticulous planning and strict adherence to specific rules. Only two organizations have authority to sanction swims across the channel: the Channel Swimming Association (CSA), founded in 1927, and the Channel Swimming & Piloting Federation (CS&PF), founded in 1999.
For the duration of her swim, Pumphrey will be supported by the CSA boat, the Masterpiece. Boat captains Fred and Harry Mardle will pilot Pumphrey’s swim, and her husband, Joe Mahach, will be her support crew member. There will also be a CSA-appointed Observer in charge of timing the swim and ensuring compliance with the rules, subject to ratification by the Committee.
In June 2024, Pumphrey became the first person to complete the Bay to Baltimore Swim, a 24-mile swim from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to the Inner Harbor in Baltimore. Throngs of fans gathered to greet her at the Harbor when she finished the swim.
On May 20, 2025, she began her second Bay to Baltimore Swim, but rapidly deteriorating conditions and high winds required the swim be cut short for safety reasons. Pumphrey’s team pivoted to a shorter swim, allowing her to jump into the water by Fort McHenry and swim 2.4 miles to the Inner Harbor Amphitheater to the waiting crowd, accompanied by Professor Trash Wheel and Urban Pirates.
Pumphrey is also an accomplished visual artist, creating large-scale paintings and sculptures reflective of her deep connection to swimming and her life in the water. She has a solo exhibition, Swimming Pool, coming soon to Creative Alliance in Baltimore, Maryland. Featuring new paintings and a site-specific installation, the exhibition will be on view from Sept. 5, 2025 to Oct. 11, 2025.
