In December last year, we posted a blog about our incredible open water swim around the Cape Recipe light house. We incorrectly stated that no woman had ever completed this swim, we stand corrected…
It’s amazing sometimes what the tide brings in. And in this case, it’s all due to the ebb and flow of social media and WhatsApp. Those cross-boundary linkages that flow through societies, cities, towns, and communities create unexpected connections. And what follows is a magical story, of legendary proportions, that travelled this route, and its story to inspire and encourage young girls.
On a sunny day in 2016, 3 December 2016 to be exact, a group of men prepared to swim around the Cape Recife lighthouse from the lighthouse beach around to Noordhoek. Yes, let those lightbulbs flash, you may think you’ve heard this story before, remember my lighthouse swim, the one where we claimed we had gone boldly where no woman had gone before, and I, err… claimed to be the first to do the circumnavigation? Well, I was wrong, we were beaten to the punch by someone even more hardcore! Thanks to the social media highways and byways, it has since come to light that in fact on that sunny day there was a female swimmer amongst the boys – a mermaid that spoke Afrikaans. Those who know her, know that she will roll you faster than she rolls her R’s. A female open-water swimmer that earned her legendary status with blood, sweat and hard-earned tears. I’m talking about a girl tougher than a toffee apple. A girl with a get-up-and-do attitude to life that waits for no one. But a woman who does it with beauty and grace. Her name is SanMari Woithe and on 3 December 2016 she was the first, and only, female to jump in with the men to tackle (and finish) this epic swim.
