Bobby Jo aiming for a world first

Bobby Jo Bassingthwaighte is out to make history again when she leaves for Europe on Wednesday to once again swim the English Channel.

In 1999 she became the first Namibian to swim the 45km English Channel and last year she added the 14,5km Strait of Gibraltar to her list of achievements.

Now she is taking on the challenge of doing a two-way 90km crossing of the English Channel as part of a three-woman team, which has never been done before.

If she and her team mates Sandy le Roux and Ulla Gossow Buttner succeed they will make history by becoming the first female team in the world to do so.

“In 1999 I became the first Namibian to swim the English channel over 45km.

Since then I wanted to do it again as part of a team and because three women have never done it before we decided to take on this challenge, so that we can put Namibia on the map,” she said.

The trio has been training for several months and according to Bobby Jo they are now ready to take on the challenge.

“We have done the necessary training and we are ready to go. We will need to do about 3km per hour and we should each swim about 10 times. We have done about 70 percent of that during our training and got used to swimming in the cold and in the dark,” she said.

“We’ve mostly been training at the Rossmund Country Club pool but we’ve also trained in the sea at Swakopmund. We did one stretch through the night from 19h00 to 11h00 at Rossmund to try and replicate the conditions that we will face,” she said.

Bassinghtwaighte said she had selected Le Roux and Gossow Buttner as her partners because of their mental strength.

“None of us are top swimmers, but it’s not about how good a swimmer you are, it’s about your mental strength – I know they’ve got it in them to do it and that’s why I selected them,” she said.

The trio will also be doing this for a good cause, namely to draw attention to the beach clean up campaign that they have launched.

“We managed to get some companies on board to help sponsor this campaign and to pay for four big skits that we have put up between Swakopmund and Walvis Bay for refuse collection,” she said.

Some of the participating companies are Premier Construction, the Light House Group, Bannerman Resources, M Z Motors Coastal, Coleman Transport, Rennies Travel, Radiowave and Namib Times.

“We are also working with the Ministry of Environment and Tourism on this, while we will do beach clean up operations in collaboration with Coca Cola and Refuse Solutions,” she added.

The swimming trio fly out to Europe today, while their actual swim will take place next week, between 26 and 28 August, depending on the weather. Their progress can be followed on their Facebook page, ‘Strokes for Earth.’