UK's Sarah Outen becomes first woman to row across Indian Ocean

London, Aug.5 (ANI): Britain's Sarah Outen has become become the first woman to row solo across the Indian Ocean. She took nearly six months to achieve this feat.

It was by no means a rosy ride. A few hundred yards from Mauritius, the finishing line for her 4,000-mile record-breaking adventure, the British biology teacher encountered her biggest challenge.

According to The Times, Outen was hit by 40-feet-high crashing waves that capsized her boat, dashing her against coral reefs and dragging her under water.

"I should have died. I was terribly afraid for my life. I remember rolling and rolling. At one point I was dragged along the reefs under the boat. My foot is ripped to shreds and I have got bruises on my legs and arms," Outen was quoted, as saying.

"The waves were breaking hard and fast against the island's steep coastal shelf. It was almost impossible to steer.

Emergency communications equipment was washed away. I knew that if I failed to get back into the boat and make it to the safety of the reef under my own power, the row might be classed as incomplete. Worse still, having rowed all this way, I wasn't about to ask for a rescue when I was just 300 m from the entrance to the bay," she added.

In the pitch dark on Monday night, she fired distress flares and was eventually guided to land, and stepped into the record books.

"It has been an incredible journey. I was swinging between laughing and smiling about it all, and bursting into tears with sorrow that the whole thing was about to come to an end," said 24-year-old Outen, who is the youngest woman to row across any ocean.

She is also the eighth woman to have rowed across an ocean solo.

Of nine previous solo attempts to cross the Indian Ocean, only three have been successful, and men made all of those. (ANI)