South African Carina Bruwer became the fastest female to swim across the Gibraltar Straits, from Spain to Morocco, on Wednesday.

Bruwer, 25, made the 16 km swim from Tarifa Point in Spain to Morocco in three hours 35 minutes, two minutes faster than the previous record set by Indian swimmer Bula Chowdhury in 2000, the SAPA news agency reported.

Bruwer, who was accompanied by two boats with a support crew from the Gibraltar Straits Swimming Association, said she had lost hope at breaking the record when she realized she had to swim 4.3 km in less than an hour.

"I am absolutely elated, she said through her public relations company based in Cape Town. "I wanted to break the record, but lost hope when I had 4.3 km left to swim in less than an hour."

"My support crew were fantastic though and kept telling me to go for it, as I might be helped by the tide towards Morocco," she said.

Bruwer, from Cape Town, is a professional concert flautist and manager of her own music agency. She is the eighth South African to successfully cross the Straits of Gibraltar.

In September 2004, a group of six South African swimmers crossed the Straits. A woman swimmer did the crossing in the 1950s.

Bruwer now holds the record for the fastest swim around Robben Island, which is about 12 km from Cape Town and famous for its jail where former South African president Nelson Mandela and other anti-apartheid heroes were imprisoned by apartheid rulers.

She is also the only swimmer to have rounded the southern-most and the northern-most points of Africa, said the SAPA report.

Bruwer's next goal is to cross the English Channel in August, it said.

Source: Xinhua