NORTH EAST — It was only fitting, amid the pitch-black stillness of Lake Erie, that Sara McClure’s inspiration was also her salvation.

McClure was 11 years old in 1993 when she and her mother stood on the sand of Freeport Beach and watched Halli Reid of North East become the first woman to swim across Lake Erie from Canada.

“Mom, I’m going to do that someday,” the wide-eyed child told Cathy McClure.

Exactly 12 years to the day after Reid’s historic swim, Sara McClure was immersed in Lake Erie at 1 a.m. August 8, exhausted and struggling, wondering how she would make it through the toughest hours of the most challenging swim of her life.

That’s when Reid — one of nine people in McClure’s navigational crew — paddled up to McClure in a kayak and told the 23-year-old how to gut it out.

McClure not only completed the 23.7-mile swim from Long Point, Ontario, to Freeport Beach, but she shattered Reid’s record time by two hours.