was brought to an end by strong currents and bad weather after almost 42 hours in the water . She made a second try in August , before she was pulled from the water after 60 miles and almost 29 hours of swimming . She blamed a shoulder injury she suffered early in the journey , and an 11-hour-long asthma attack . Her latest attempt , accompanied by shark divers , began just after 6 p.m. Friday from Havana 's Hemingway Marina . The former world champion swimmer projected the swim would take close to 60 hours . There was a bit of excitement early Saturday afternoon as an oceanic whitetip shark swam near Nyad , but a diver on her team faced it off and it meandered away . The swimmer improved her performance late Saturday morning after struggling to maintain her usual stroke rate , her support team said . Fortified by chicken soup , Nyad was making good progress until the Saturday evening incident . Nyad got back in the water at 12:20 a.m. Sunday and swam for nearly 11 hours before packing it in . `` But for each of us , is n't life about
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Hindered by painful stings and strong currents , endurance swimmer Diana Nyad ended her latest attempt to swim from Cuba to Florida about two-thirds of the way through the crossing Sunday . The 62-year-old Nyad suffered jellyfish and Portuguese man-of-war stings Saturday , while ocean cross-currents were pushing her off course , team captain Mark Sollinger said . She was pulled out of the water about 11 a.m. Sunday , about 67 nautical miles through the 103-nautical-mile passage . Treading water before being helped out of the water , Nyad said the man-of-war stings had paralyzed some of the muscles in her back , given her chills and nausea . Doctors warned her she could suffer long-term health problems if she suffered another sting . `` I 've never been in any pain , ever , like that in my whole life , '' she said , adding , `` Now it 's set me so far back , I just do n't ' have the lung capacity to swim the way I can . '' It was her third attempt to make the swim from Cuba to Florida . Her first , in 1978 ,