On the 1st of May 2010, Abi Brown attempted to swim the 25km across Lake Malawi at the narrowest point, the bottleneck between the remote shore of Cape Ngobo and the popular tourist beach of Senga Bay. She was the first woman to attempt the challenge.
Kayak Africa sponsored Abi by providing free accommodation on the islands for her training swims and a guide to accompany and support her.

On the 10 April, Abi swam from Mumbo Island back to Kayak Africa’s basecamp and, without even getting out of the water, back to Mumbo! A distance of 20kms. Abi took on the crossing of the lake as a personal goal but also to support lakeside village projects (with local sponsorship) and the Microloan Foundation (with overseas sponsorship).

She sadly did not make it this time around, but in her words “… I did around 35km in 12hrs 40mins but had to pull out 1km from shore as the currents were just too strong, waves too high and night had fallen. It was scary and disappointing but exciting and inspiring at the same time – certainly achieved the objective of pushing physical barriers!

Delved into an Everest book as soon as I got back, searching for some solace, and found this by Earl Denman (Alone to Everest): ‘I grew up with ambition and determination. I thought a lot and developed the faraway look of a dreamer, for it was always the distant heights that fascinated me and drew me to them in spirit. I was not sure what could be accomplished by tenacity and little else, but the target was set high and each rebuff saw me determined to see at least one major dream through to its fulfillment.’