Pacifica woman completes historic swim without wetsuit

SAN FRANCISCO - A Pacifica woman made history by completing a very difficult open-water swim.  

Amy Appelhans Gubser, 55, became the first person to swim west of the Golden Gate Bridge to the Farallon Islands without a wetsuit.

It took her 17 hours to complete the nearly 30-mile swim.

The neonatal nurse who works in the pediatric intensive care unit at UCSF said she's been planning and training for this swim for five years.

One of the biggest challenges was the cold water. 

"Each mile the temperature kept dropping and dropping,  which I was prepared for," she said in an interview on Tuesday. "I wasn't prepared for 43-degree water, but I was prepared for higher 40s."

To make the swim official, Gubser could not touch a boat on her journey, but her team,  who followed her on a boat, gave her hot chocolate and poured warm water on her throughout her swim.