Cook Strait NZ swim

On March 5th 2004, I started my swim from the South Island of NZ to swim the 28Kms to the North Island of NZ. The day started out as a sunny day with not much wind and 15 degree Celcius water temperture. the swim took me 8 hours and 31 minutes. But at the 6 hour mark of the swim the weather changed dramatically and I now had 65 km hour winds and 4 metre swells. These conditions did not change for the rest of the swim. The last 600 metres of my swim took 40 minutes. There were helicopters overhead ready to winch me out of the water, the accompanying Inflatable Rubber Boat was flipping in the air around me, but as I can not see what is going on around me I just kept on swimming and listening to the whistle commands. I will always recognise that the only reason that I completed this swim was because I was blind and I could not see what was going on all around me. this would become the first leg of my 6 continental swim over a 925 day period and I believe that this was the hardest swim that I ever completed.