Bay Bridge To Inner Harbor Swim Will Celebrate Newly Safe Baltimore Waters

ANNAPOLIS, MD — A Baltimore resident will swim from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to the newly swimmable Inner Harbor later this month.

The marathon swimmer, Katie Pumphrey, expects to finish the 24-mile course in 12 or 13 hours. The 36-year-old will start at Sandy Point State Park in Annapolis and finish at Harborplace Amphitheater in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.

Pumphrey hopes to jump in around 3 a.m. some day between June 23 and June 27. The exact date depends on the weather forecast.

Pumphrey was originally scheduled to depart in mid-May, but the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge delayed her trek.

A GoFundMe for Pumphrey's swim will donate 10 percent of its proceeds to the Maryland Tough Baltimore Strong Key Bridge Fund. The swim fundraiser had collected $2,204 of its $15,000 goal by Monday at 4:45 p.m. It's still accepting donations at this link.

"As a proud Baltimorean, I am beyond excited to celebrate this milestone for my city, and to be the first person on record to complete a swim of this scale in these waters," Pumphrey said on her website.

Pumphrey's page said she swam the English Channel in 2015 and 2022, circumnavigated Manhattan in 2017 and completed the first double-length Deep Creek Lake swim in 2021.

Fans can track Pumphrey's Bay to Baltimore swim live at swimkatie.com. That webpage also has a newsletter sign-up for alerts. Pumphrey will post more details on her Facebook and Instagram.

The swim follows news that the Inner Harbor was declared swimmable after a 14-year Healthy Harbor Initiative. The Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore on May 20 said the waters are safe for human contact whenever there hasn't been a heavy rain for at least 48 hours.

"We know our work is far from over, but we must start swimming. It's a commitment to keep working to ensure that our ecosystem thrives and that swimming in the harbor becomes a routine occurrence," stated Michael Hankin, chairman of Waterfront Partnership's Healthy Harbor Initiative. "We had an ambitious goal and, with a lot of hard work and people believing we could do it; we are finally realizing our vision."

To celebrate, a 150-person group swim in Fell's Point was announced for June 23. Tickets for the event, dubbed the Harbor Splash, went on sale Wednesday and sold out in 10 minutes.

"We all own this collectively, owning up to what the harbor was but also saying, this is where we are now and this is where we're going to go is our collective responsibility to talk about that," Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said on the Harbor Splash website. "I know the data, I know the water is safe, and that's why I'll be jumping in the harbor."

More details on Harbor Splash are posted at waterfrontpartnership.org/harborsplash.