COOK STRAIT SWIM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 10, 13 January 1931, Page 10

COOK STRAIT SWIM.

MISS GLEITZE'S INTENTIONS. AlTEliliPT NEXT MONTH. ''TOO GOLD," SAYS A NEW , ZEALANDER, Miss Mercedes Gleitze, the endurance ewimmer, will leave New Zealand for Australia to compete in an international endurance swim to be held at Manly on January 24. After that event she will return to New Zealand to attempt to carry out her original intention, and the main objective of her visit to the Dominion, of swimming Cook Strait. She will return before. February 8. In an interview in Wellington after her harbour swim, Miss Lily Copplcstone said ehe did not think Miss Gleitze would be successful in the Cook Strait swim. "The distance will not stop her," she said, "but -I am sure the cold will. I can stand cold, too, but the Strait was far too much, for me."

She herself had no intention of attempting the Cook Strait swim again. A -writer in the Sydney "Bulletin" says: "I don't envy the lady who proposes to swim Cook Strait. The current at the best of times is terrific, and there is nothing in tho.32nglish Channel to compare with the Terawhiti Rip, into which ya<Ji.ti3 attempting the crossing appear to be. drawn with the' inevitability of ancient galleons into the maelstrom. The Rip is simply a tremendously steep jobblo set up by a heavy flow over shallow ground. I once spent seven hours in it and lost my _ reputation for never having been seasick in a sailing boat. "The worst feature of the currente is, their incalculability. The direction may change from day to day and even from hour to hour, eo no great ad van-. tage can be obtained even from the most intensive study of their habits. From whichever side the start is made difficulties will present themselves at the landing. With a falling tide the great sounds belch their accumulations of water into the eea like a storm-water channel in a cloudburst. Only a highpowered. launch can make way against it. A sailing boat may spend half a day beatino- to and fro waiting for the slack, and a swimmer would not have an earthly. Most of the coast .about the entrance is rocky* and a heavy seabreaks on it." ■ • . •