The Simon's Bay Mile - Women's Day Swim

In the sheltered sea waters of Simon's Town, the grey silhouettes of naval vessels at anchor create an unusual backdrop for an open water swimming event that glides directly over swaying kelp beds. The Simon's Bay Mile - Women's Day Swim is an open water sea race held at the Simon's Town Waterfront in Cape Town, in the Western Cape of South Africa. Organized by Swim Cape Town, the event invites swimmers to take on the classic distance of one mile, 1,609 metres, across the bay. The course is laid out as a single one-mile loop in Simon's Bay, where swimmers stroke past moored naval ships with mountains rising in the background.

Beneath the surface, the route crosses kelp forests where swimmers may glimpse stingrays and other marine life. The water is brisk and invigorating, yet swimmers in past editions have enjoyed clear visibility and calm conditions whenever race organizers moved the start to a reserve day to avoid an incoming cold front. In the final stretch, the field navigates around the Simon's Town Jetty before sprinting up the beach to cross the finish line on the sand.

Simon's Bay: the breakwater, Boulders Beach and past editions

In Simon's Town the land rises steeply from near the water's edge, and the small harbour is protected from swells by a breakwater built from thousands of huge sandstone blocks quarried from the mountain above. Boulders Beach lies a few kilometres south of Simon's Town, where small coves and beaches are interspersed between boulders of Cape granite. African penguins have formed a colony on Boulders Beach since 1982. At the 2026 Simon's Bay Mile Women's Day Swim the weather was near-perfect and the water 13.5°C (56 °F), and swimmers were sent off in waves according to their predicted mile times. The 2026 swim also ran a hygiene-product donation drive, with the donations received by Happy Valley Home in Simon's Town. The first Simon's Bay Mile was held in 2021 with 50 swimmers, starting and finishing at Simon's Town Long Beach.

False Bay and Cape Point: two ocean currents meet

Cape Town's metropolitan area is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and False Bay to the south. Near Cape Point, at the southern tip of the peninsula, two major oceanic water masses converge, creating an exceptionally diverse marine ecology. Along that colder Atlantic seaboard, a series of seventeen peaks known as the Twelve Apostles lines the coast. Further along this shoreline, Glen Beach is situated north of Camps Bay Beach, separated by a natural rock outcrop. While summer sand deposits cause Glen Beach and Camps Bay Beach to merge into a single stretch of sand, winter storms regularly erode these deposits right at the shoreline. A private tunnel once connected Graaff's Pool directly to the Bordeaux manor house, and the site was later named after Jacobus Arnoldus Graaff, who donated it to the City of Cape Town.

Historically restricted to men for nude swimming, the pool was enclosed by walls on all sides except the west until 2005. After 2005, the high surrounding walls were demolished, leaving an open seaside tidal bath.

Table Mountain Marine Protected Area: kelp and penguins

To safeguard this coastline, the Table Mountain National Park Marine Protected Area was established in 2004, covering the waters around the Cape Peninsula about five kilometres from the race venue. False Bay is a designated Hope Spot and supports the Marine Big Five, including whales, dolphins, seals, sharks, and penguins. Just down the shore, Boulders Beach is home to a large colony of endangered African penguins. The marine protected area also preserves historical shipwrecks alongside culturally significant fish traps that remain preserved.

Peers Cave to Table Bay: navigators and shorelines

Long before permanent harbor settlements existed, early European navigators observed the cape from the water; in 1495, Vasco da Gama named the coastline Terra de Fume after seeing smoke rising from fires lit by indigenous people. Encounters along the shoreline were fraught with danger, and in 1510, the Portuguese admiral Francisco de Almeida and sixty-four men were killed at the Battle of Salt River by the Goringhaiqua, who deployed trained cattle in combat. In 1652, the city of Cape Town was established on the shore below the mountains by Jan van Riebeeck. Two defensive redoubts, Kyckuit and Duijnhoop, were soon constructed at the mouth of the Salt River in 1654.

The Dutch established this settlement primarily to provide a reliable replenishment station for merchant ships negotiating the hazardous maritime passage around the Cape. The Castle of Good Hope was originally situated right on the coastline of Table Bay before land reclamation projects moved it inland. The original entrance of the seaside fort faced the water until it was replaced in 1682. Today, Three Anchor Bay serves an active lifesaving role as the national headquarters of the National Sea Rescue Institute.

Simon's Town Waterfront: beneath the granite peaks

After the swim, athletes gather along the Simon's Town Waterfront to relax beneath the granite peaks.