COOK STRAIT SWIM

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 79, 2 March 1929, Page 4

COOK STRAIT SWIM

ELEMENT OF LUCK. STRANGELY VARIABLE WATER. Some Auckland swimming enthusiasts, deeply interested in the attempts to swim Cook Strait, recently warted on Mr Ad. Howitt, of Lyall Bay, Wellington, where the water rolls in from the Strait. Mr Howitt, who has been accustomed to bathe there at all seasons for nearly twenty years, and who is a recognised authority on the currents which baffle so many swimmers in that locality, was asked if he ever thought a swimmer would conquer the water between the two islands. The answer was that there was a great difference between the temperature in the English Channel, which was fairly even in the summer season, and the water of Cook Strait, which rolled in freely from the Antarctic and was often colder in the summer time than at oertain periods in the middle of winter. This might seem a strange statement to make, but once in a while, for reasons which he had never been able to explain, the water does attain a higher temperature ■ for brief periods from some unknown cause. It may happen through some big internal eruption or upheaval under the sea, for it is a weak part of the earth’s crust, or the escape of some hidden warming power suddenly escaping, but there it was.

He had witnessed many endurance tests at the Bay for wagers and other reasons, and during a long period of years he had never known anyone to "be able to stay in the water for longer •than three hours at a’ time. The case he had in'mind was one of the fattest men he had ever seen in the water, and after he had won his bet for three hours’ endurance of the cold water lie was so benumbed when he came out that he said he would not take the job on again for all the tea in China. If some strong swimmer could strike one of the rare warm periods he had spoken of, the Strait might be swum. There were swimmers who bathed all through the year at Lyall Bay, and these could bear testimonv that the period of the year did net always have to do with the temperature of the water.

At the time of the Penguin wreck, one of the passengers who could not swim a yard was saved after being an l^our in tire water without anything to support him. and is still living in Wellington. Asked how lie managed it, lie said that when he was thrown into the water and commenced to sink he felt so cold that he just commenced to “tread water,” and he continued to do this till he .was rescued, and the exercise kept him from freezing, but how much longer lie cduld have continued it he did not know.