Tina Neill became the first person to swim from San Clemente Island to the Southern California mainland today.

The famous backstroke-swimming channel swimmer finished the 52-mile (83.6 km) ocean swim in 28 hours 41 minutes to join the 24-hour club.

Neill holds the world records for the fastest backstroke crossing of the Catalina Channel (10 hours 37 minutes in 2008) and the fastest backstroke crossing of the English Channel (13 hours 22 minutes in 2005). She has also done a double crossing of the Catalina Channel in 22 hours 2 minutes, a 17 hour 17 minute crossing of the Molokai Channel and a 19-mile Santa Cruz Channel from Santa Cruz Island to California in 10 hours 32 minutes as well as the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim.

But this was not the first time the intrepid swimmer has experienced these waters. She previously was a member of the HTC Relay team with Forrest Nelson, Emily Evans, Steve Lowe, Kent Nicholas, and Mike Mitchell that completed a relay swim of 25 hours 48 minutes from San Clemente Island.

She obviously used that experience to good use.

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