Twelve hours and 28 minutes after she climbed into the English Channel in Dover, England, Karah Nazor emerged Sunday evening on the French shoreline 21 miles away.

Ms. Nazor, 31, and a Chattanooga native, became the first Tennessean to complete the swim across the English Channel. The water was 60 degrees and choppy, “but she made it,” exclaimed her mother, Karen Nazor Hill, who was on the boat alongside her daughter as she swam. Ms. Nazor Hill is a feature writer at the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

When reached by phone while en route to Wales on Monday, Ms. Nazor said she felt lucky that she has no pain in her shoulders from swimming for so long.

“My arms are sore, though,” she said.

“I’m just so proud of her. She’s a rock star. Who wants to do anything for 12 straight hours, like swimming in cold water?” asked sister Kacee Nazor, of Signal Mountain. “She said she was exhausted, but just kept going.”

The week before the swim was filled with setbacks. Ms. Nazor arrived in England on July 6 with a bite believed to be from a brown recluse, a very poisonous spider. She was put on antibiotics and also developed a cold.

Weather was another factor, with winds blowing in excess of 50 mph on most days. But she practiced swimming in the channel daily.

Then late last week, her pilot coach gave the go-ahead for Sunday’s swim, which began at 6:45 a.m. and ended on the shores of France at 7:30 p.m. that night.

Ms. Nazor trained for the channel challenge in the San Francisco Bay. She is in the city working on postdoctoral studies in prion research at the University of California at San Francisco. She’s a graduate of Chattanooga’s Girls Preparatory School and James Madison University, and she was a member of both school’s swim teams.

GPS swim coach John Woods said he’s amazed at her attempt and completion of the channel crossing.

“It’s a great physical feat,” he said. “She’s fallen in love with long-distance swimming. It can be a lifetime sport, and she’s a great example to everyone. It’s exciting for me to have known someone who has made it across the English Channel.”

To be allowed to attempt the English Channel, a person must swim for six hours in water that has a temperature of less than 60 degrees. Ms. Nazor completed her qualifying earlier this summer, going from Candlestick Park, into the Pacific Ocean and back into San Francisco Bay, finishing near the San Francisco Zoo.

There have been 772 swimmers who completed the channel crossing as of 2007, according to www.channelswimmingassociation.com. Each have signed the wall at White Horse Saloon in Dover. On Wednesday, Ms. Nazor will return to Dover to do the same.

Tech Talk