The Fear and Fame of Wild Swimming the World's Seas

08.01.2025 - 23:59 / cntraveler.com / Lake Tahoe

Last year, open water swimmer Amy Appelhans Gubser became the first person to swim from San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge to the Farallon Islands, a craggy, mostly uninhabited archipelago off the Pacific coast that is known for its frigid, shark-infested waters. The 55-year-old fetal cardiology nurse coordinator from Pacifica, California, completed the 29.6-mile distance in 17 hours, three minutes. “It was so foggy that I only knew when it was daylight because the sky was a lighter gray,” she says.

A competitive swimmer in her younger years, Appelhans Gubser took a long hiatus from the pool to raise her family. When she returned to swimming recreationally at age 44, once her kids were in college and she was in a good place professionally as a nurse, it was the open waters like oceans, bays, and rivers that most resonated with her. “With open water swimming, or wild swimming as they call it in Europe, there’s no one judging you or telling you that you need to be faster,” she says. “I find it really liberating.”

This past October, the member of San Francisco’s historic South End Rowing Club (dating back to 1873) swam around Anacapa Island in Channel Islands National Park, off the coast of Ventura, California. Though only 10.6 miles in circumference, Appelhans Gubser says the surrounding currents are infamously strong. “Still, the water there is just so beautiful, it’s almost like swimming in an aquarium.” Over the next couple of years, she plans on attempting both the Straight of Juan de Fuca—a 12-mile swim from Port Angeles, Washington, to Victoria, British Columbia—and Scotland’s Loch Ness.

We chatted with Appelhans Gubser about her iconic swim, how she prepared for the water’s extreme cold, and its great white sharks (“Your Spidey sense is accurate, and you really do know when they’re there,” she says). Below, she also shares some of her favorite open waters around the globe.

How did your swim to the Farallon Islands come about?

Once I started swimming in the open water, I realized I was pretty strong. People would invite me to do some really crazy swims, and I started building up even more strength. After a year of swimming in San Francisco Bay, someone asked me to join them on the Gibraltar Swim in 2014 from Spain to Morocco, and I did very well. Then I swam across Lake Tahoe and Europe’s North Sea, and in 2015 completed a two-way relay with five other swimmers from the Farallon islands and back. From that moment on I was captivated with the islands. I would joke with my husband, saying “I can swim those,” while at the same time building up my cold water swimming resumé until I was ready.

One of Amy Appelhans Gubser's feats? Swimming across Lake Tahoe in California.

How do you prepare for such