On 23 April this year we flew into Lilongwe, Malawi with the goal of swimming across one of Africa’s great lakes – Lake Malawi. We were a multinational crew made up of Polly and Chris Stapley from Swaziland, Ruth and Jay Azran from South Africa and an Australian – Andy Stevens. Some of us had never met, some had. All of us were vibrating with nervous anticipation and all of us wanted to complete this solo crossing.
Given the remote location, logistics were handled Walter Muggleton from Cape Town who had successfully seconded a handful of Lake Malawi crossings, together with his wingman Aubrey De Klerk. The objective and strategy was simple: we had a four-day window to complete this attempt. The crossing was further than any of us had swum before – and we wanted and needed the best conditions possible to increase our chances. However, there was talk of a hurricane gathering momentum off the Northern Coast of Mozambique. We didn’t know if it would make landfall, but we decided to go for glory on the first swimming opportunity.
We were going to attempt the swim in two separate groups. Given that the slower group needed maximum daylight hours to achieve success, Walter recommended we camp the night before at the starting point on Makanjila point. When we woke the wind was blowing a gale and despite reassurances that it would settle down by lunch, the first group of Polly, Ruth and Andy set off as the sun was about to peak above the horizon. With Walter confirming these were the worst conditions he had encountered to date for a crossing – we knew we had our work cut out.