credit – John Chapman / MSF

A grandmother who calls herself overweight just became the first woman to swim from San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge to the Farallon Islands—a distance of darn near 30 miles.

The former collegiate swimmer had not done any swimming for 24 years, but braved frigid waters, sharks, and jellyfish—all without a wetsuit.

Amy Appelhans Gubser leapt into the waters around her support vessel at 3:27 a.m. and proceeded to swim for 17 hours to arrive at the Farallons after nightfall. Observed by an agent of the Marathon Swimmers Federation (MSF), her record is pending verification, but would make her the first woman to complete the swim, and the first of either sex to do so in the outbound direction, i.e. bridge to islands.

Two male swimmers have completed the distance starting from the islands, but Gubser succeeded in the other direction after all three previous attempts failed, which were monitored by the MSF.

The resident of Pacifica, California, told Fox News Digital that because of fog and red tide, she did the vast majority of the swimming in something like a sensory deprivation bubble, in which she could see only a few feet in any direction above water, and not even one inch past her fingertips below it.

In shark-prowled waters, such conditions would give most people a heart attack, but Gubser entered a “meditative state,” broken up every thirty minutes by snack breaks.

“I really had to be very thoughtful and careful about how I approached this swim because of the sharks,” she explained. “And April, May, June is when a very big migration of great white sharks takes place away from the Farallon Islands. That's why the swim has to take place during that timeframe.”

Amy Gubser (second from left) smiles for the camera after completing her 17 hour swim – credit MSF

She continued, explaining she didn't wear a wetsuit to fit with MSF rules despite the warmth and added buoyancy it would have offered.

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“When you wear a wetsuit your skin rubs against the material, and the last thing that I really wanted was for my skin to bleed near a shark island,” she said.

The water temperatures hovered in the high 40s Fahrenheit at the onset, and gradually climbed about 10 degrees over the course of the swim. She kept up a steady stroke rate of around 61 per minute, and ate chicken broth, canned peaches, hot chocolate, and some potatoes along the way.

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On two occasions she was stung by a jellyfish.

Gubser hopes that the feat will be inspirational to all who need it, and demonstrates that athletic excellence can be maintained even when age and body weight suggest otherwise.

WATCH the record-setting swim below… 

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