Tide and time wait for no man
BY 9.30pm the black sea and night sky are one. The ocean kicks up around the swimmer. He can’t see his hands pulling through the water. Vast and silent forces swirl around and just 800 metres beyond him lies New Zealand's North Island. He left the South Island over 11 hours ago and the weather is getting nasty . . .
It is Friday May 6, 2022. Autumn in New Zealand. The night-time swimmer is 50-year-old Jeff Reid and he’s trying to cross the treacherous Cook Strait. Incredibly, Reid has already swum this challenging passage back when he was just 14. Today, the father of two, aims to earn the record for the longest period of time between two crossings.
“I want to see if I can do it again because I don’t want my legacy to be that I swam it when I was 14.”
But there’s another reason the Napier Port marine team leader wants to swim. A few years ago, he and wife Amy learned that Reid has polycystic kidney disease, which causes the deterioration of kidney function with the eventuality of regular dialysis.
“I don’t know how long my body will support the necessary physical strain of the swim and the hours of cold-water training,” Reid says. “My undertaking to swim the Strait again is a challenge and a pleasure for myself, my wellbeing, and my sense of fulfilment.”
Cook Strait is the narrow gap that separates Aotearoa New Zealand’s North Island from the South Island. It’s where the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean meet and, at its narrowest point, it is 22km across. Powerful currents push through and, without warning, tidal rips flow one way and then the other. Traversing the Strait in a straight line is impossible and it’s expected Reid’s swim will be more like 26km long.
The earliest known Cook Strait swim was in the mid-18th century by Māori woman Hinepoupou, of the Ngāti Kuia tribe.
But it was New Zealander Barrie Devenport’s 1962 swim that gripped the nation’s attention. Devenport became the Sir Edmund Hillary of swimming and since then swimmers from around the world have been lured by the challenge.
Cook Strait’s inclusion in Ocean’s Seven – an international marathon-swimming challenge of seven channel swims – has only increased its popularity.
After Devenport, Wellington’s Philip Rush became New Zealand’s master of endurance swimming. Rush is a two-time double Cook Strait crosser and holds the record for the fastest double and triple English Channel crossings.
Now running the Cook Strait Swim guiding company, Rush is the ideal person to help Reid across. A straight talker, Rush says as well as a strong swimmer, a successful crossing requires luck around weather, tides, and temperatures.
“It’s not an easy piece of water to get across . . . no two days are the same. That’s the nature of the beast and why it’s the hardest swim in the world.”
Only one in every four of Rush’s swimmers makes it across.
Rush is helped by others who will crew two vessels during each swim attempt. Today, skipper Chris McCallum and navigator Joy Griffiths are in the 38-foot support boat Tangaroa, named for the Māori and Polynesian god of the sea. The pair are responsible for planning and safely executing today’s passage. Their ability to calmly gather and interpret weather patterns and tides from their observations, national reference material, and electronic reports, dictates who makes it home.
During the day Rush will direct Reid from close proximity in an inflatable rescue boat (IRB). He asks for two things from his swimmers: consistent speed, and that he or she does exactly as he asks.
Corey Fairbairn, a firefighter, will drive the IRB. “I look forward to these days because it’s only a handful of people that get to do this, have the ability to do this, and it’s special to help facilitate that.”
Also supporting Reid is his American-born teacher wife, Amy, a sunny-day swimmer who also loves New Zealand’s bush life. Today she’s feeling proud but she has a queasy stomach and wonders if its seasickness or nerves. The couple’s children Frankie (12) and Lucy (9) have stayed home with their grandparents.
Long-time friend Davey Jones – also a long-distance swimmer – is also on board. When he’s not swimming, he’s a predator trapper committed to the ecological restoration of New Zealand. He will swim alongside his friend if Reid needs encouragement or a pacer.
And completing the support team is part-time ocean swimmer and full-time writer Hayley Redpath.
Reid’s pairing with Rush is symbolic: in 1987, on the same day, they both swam Cook Strait. The young men never met and so today, as Tangaroa makes her bumpy way from the North Island to the South, they connect and discuss the day ahead.
The crossing will be from the South Island to the North Island, but in order to navigate the shortest distance between the two, Reid will actually swim in a south-easterly direction.
During the crossing he will have to push through two or more tides that move in firstly from his left, then from his right. These tides act like powerful rivers running at right angles to the direction he needs to go.
Rush says today's sea conditions are the best since Reid began waiting in March for a favourable window. He says swimming is about more than just brute strength. “It’s a matter of getting the weather and tides right.”
In the over 20 years he’s been guiding, he’s had only 150 out of 570 swimmers achieve their goal.
By the time Tangaroa has completed the two-hour crossing from Mana Cruising Club in the North Island to near Cape Koamaru on Arapawa Island (considered part of the South Island), Reid just wants to get in the water. It’s been weeks of waiting and the green-blue ocean is inviting him in.
After a kiss for Amy, Reid joins Rush and Fairbairn in the IRB and motors the few metres over to the South Island. Without fanfare he slips into the water, swims to, and touches the cliff rock. It’s 10.15am.
“I was euphoric because it was so lovely. Usually, I dive down and have a little play, but I knew I had to get going.”
The sun creates sparkles of light that dance along the ocean. Reid describes it as glorious. When he swam the Strait in 1987 the water temperature was 12 degrees Celsius so today’s 17 is easy to manage. He settles into a rhythm.
Like all elite open-water swimmers, Reid has a high arm cadence. He turns his arms over 75 times a minute and he’ll maintain it all day.
From the bow of Tangaroa Jones can see his friend hasn’t gone out too hard. “He’s in a nice gear, not taking a lot of energy out of himself.”
Many people think that swimming power comes from the arms, says Jones, but it’s the back that plays the more important role. “Look at the back on that bugger,” he laughs. “Two-thirds of him is body and then he’s got these dinky little legs.”
Amy is pleased he’s in the water. She rings her parents-in-law to let them know. Thirty-six years ago, it was Ray and Mary Reid who were in the support vessel watching their son traverse Cook Strait. Ray is emotional and Amy confirms she’ll stay in touch.
The first three hours are blissful for swimmer and onlookers alike. At around 1.15pm Reid and the support crew enjoy their respective lunches. While Reid tucks into another bottle of nutritional formula mixed with hot oat milk, the support vessel crew devour mince pies and biscuits. Amy likens this part of the day to childbirth. “One person is doing all the work while the other sits on the side-line eating a sandwich yelling ‘yay’!”
By now Reid is 8.2km in. Due to some tidal push it’s not as far as the co-ordinators – or Reid – had hoped, but with everything else going so well it’s only a minor concern. Reid gives himself over entirely to Rush’s directions. “I had to listen to him, trust him, and all day I put my head down and just did just what he asked.”
Just after 2.45pm Reid makes it to halfway. He breaks a Rush rule when he pauses his swimming and yells to everyone “I’m happy!” Rush chastises him but then gives the crowd more: “He’s going good!”
Reid is better than good. He feels free and fast as the sun warms his back and shoots beams through the water. “It was so pleasurable. I had people say you’ve got to enjoy the process and I did. Even when the fumes of Tangaroa smelt terrible I turned it into a positive because I knew it meant everyone was close.”
But by 3pm the mood on Tangaroa is darkening. The bowed heads of skipper McCallum and navigator Griffiths almost touch as they pore over a navigational chart. “He’ll have to have his headlights on,” forewarns McCallum, alluding to a night swim. For the first time today, Reid’s support team are worried.
A powerful tide means Reid is being pushed strongly to the south. The further he goes, the more the North Island’s rugged coastline retreats.
“This whole mess of Cook Strait water is going straight down there,” says McCallum, pointing to the Pacific Ocean. He likens this tide to the flow of water in New Zealand’s mighty Waikato River, and says it’s extremely tough to swim across. “Today, the tide is stronger.”
Reid doesn’t realise how far he’s slipping down the Strait but he does find it odd he can no longer see the windmills on the North Island’s coastline. He continues swimming 75 strokes a minute, at times 80, and follows the course of the IRB. He hears Rush yell that the South Island is now history.
An hour passes. More fix points are taken, and Amy is nervous. “I’m worried he will miss the land.”
By 4.15pm Reid’s been swimming for six hours and covered 17.8km, but he’s whooshing down the centre of Cook Strait faster than he’s moving towards land. There’s a crackle of static from the two-way radio and Rush calls from the IRB for an update. “The good news is that he has gone forward in the past half hour,” McCallum tells him, “but the bad news is, he has gone down probably two miles [3.7km].”
Rush has watched that scenario unfold. “We just have to keep chipping away.”
As the sun begins to set, skipper McCallum announces he’s “getting ready for the stressful bit”. He asks his passengers to tidy the vessel while he transfers torches, navigational lights, and warm clothes to Rush and Fairbairn. Amy’s stomach is churning with nerves.
Reid, though, isn’t worried at all. He’s just been told he is 6km from the North Island. As he turns to breathe, he steals glances at the sky as it moves through deep orange to smoky blue, then grey. He switches his tinted goggles for clear ones that have a navigational light affixed. On every breath he searches for the IRB, his North Star, his Matariki, and doesn’t even notice the Interislander ferry Valentine as it passes close by.
At 6.08pm Tangaroa’s darkening cabin is empty but for writer Redpath and navigator Griffiths. As Griffiths lays down her tools she murmurs “he’s not going to do this”.
The next two hours are testament to Reid’s swimming prowess and mental strength. While perplexed to learn he’s 6km, then 7km from shore, he guesses it’s the tides. He’s calm because he’s got plenty in the tank and an extra kilometre at the end isn’t going to break him.
Instead, he’s thinking about night swimming, “like wearing a blindfold in the water”. He’s using earplugs and is experiencing the world through touch alone.
He breaks his swimming into chunks that match his favourite swim loop in Napier. “That’s the first buoy, the second buoy, I was marking it along in my mind.”
Darkness envelopes him, a shimmering river of stars appears overhead, and for Reid, time slips easily by.
Time isn’t as fluid on board Tangaroa. Amy is quiet and marks each passing minute with a glance at her phone. She asks Griffiths to explain what’s happening. The crew are waiting for the slack tide that will give Reid a chance to swim in still waters before it turns him around and, they hope, pushes him towards the coast.
With his trajectory south, the North Island’s Oteranga Bay is now a possible finishing point. Rugged and rocky, it’s where the underground Cook Strait communications cable comes ashore.
“Earlier in the day I felt joy, excitement, love and pride,” Amy says “In the past couple of hours it’s got really harrowing.”
There are four kilometres to go when the slack tide arrives and arrests Reid’s southerly slide. From afar, friends and family can see Reid’s progress unfold via a GPS tracker app on their phones. They watch as he turns back on himself almost 180 degrees, leaving a line shaped like an umbrella handle.
But there’s something that the virtual audience can’t see . . . as well as having to cross over the new strong north-moving tide, he must also swim through worsening weather.
Reid notices the change in the weather and sea state. When he turns his head to breathe, dark unseen waves smack into his mouth, and his throat hurts from the sea water. Swell disrupts his left-arm stroke. In the IRB, Rush and Fairbairn are also getting tossed around. They’re willing Reid on but they’re growing increasingly wet and cold. They give Reid hot Complan, tell him it’s his last feed and to push hard. Reid understands: “this is the last lap, I’m going to make it”.
In the rolling Tangaroa, crockery rattles and a water bottle falls from the table. McCallum calls for everyone to sit down. Jones shouts his support to Reid one last time then takes a seat in the stern. Amy cuts off a phone call and tucks into a corner.
While everyone waits anxiously, Reid battles on. He moves his arms powerfully despite the coal-black waves breaking over him. He sometimes struggles to see the IRB. “I was thinking ‘shouldn’t I be getting there now?’.” He’s only one kilometre from shore but over the past hour the tide has brought him to a standstill.
McCallum is mindful that, regardless of how this swim ends, there’s nearly two hours of motoring required to get back to Mana Cruising Club. In the pitch black he momentarily loses sight of the IRB and it unnerves him. He radios the IRB crew. “It’s starting to get a bit nasty, and we’ve got to get home remember?”
He's a kilometre offshore and so is the swimmer and IRB crew, but they're not getting any closer and the weather is getting worse.
Knowing they’re close to land Rush asks Reid for 10 minutes of hard swimming to see if he can get across the river-like tide. Reid responds, energised and eager to get the swim over with. He reaches down through years of ocean swimming and finds stamina. With no clue as to which direction he swims he churns through the water. “I really dug it in for those 10 minutes.”
Every now and then Jones can see Reid’s goggles’ light as his friend etches a tiny blue groove into the distance.
Over the sound of the worsening weather Rush radios from the IRB, and McCallum tells him they are 300m further out from the beach than they were an hour ago. The final radio exchanges between the swim coordinator and the captain play out over two minutes. Their conversation is a mix of deliberation, care, and kindness. The crew is disappointed, McCallum says, “but we need to get home safely, and we need to get home for the swimmer, so he can swim it again if he needs to”.
Rush hates having to tell Reid it is over.
“This guy hasn’t got hypothermia. The water temperature is amazing. He’s had a 75-80 stroke rate pretty much all the way. He has worked so hard to get there, and there is nothing you can do. In the end being so f****n close, it just does your head in.”
It’s 9.43pm when he leans over the side of the IRB and tells Reid he’s actually just slipped backwards 300m: “We’ve got to pull you.”
Trusting his team, Reid accepts it with an obedient “okay” and seconds later is hauled from the rough water into the IRB.
He’s coherent and polite with the men who’ve been his lifeline for the past 33km. When Griffiths stops the clock Reid has been swimming for 11 hours, 26 minutes, and 56 seconds. “He’s just swum so well,” she says quietly.
Onboard Tangaroa, Reid eats potato chips and sporadically talks to those around him. Rush and Fairbairn secure the IRB to Tangaroa then Reid reaches out to get Rush’s attention. Through a crunchy mouthful of chippies he says “thank you”. The men laugh when nearly in unison they both say, “I tried”.
Sir Edmund Hilary once said of his 1953 Mt Everest summit that he hadn’t “conquered” the world’s tallest mountain, Everest had merely relented. Today, Cook Strait was unrelenting.
Back home in Napier, Reid says he's overjoyed that on May 6, 2022, he swam farther and longer than ever before. The day was magical, and he couldn’t have wished for anything more.
It’s important to him that his own lack of swimming ability or mental stamina were not the reasons the swim was abandoned. “I didn’t touch the rocks, but I never gave up.”
Reid recognises the efforts of the crew and agrees with their decision to pull him in. “As the tides worked against my swimming the sea state deteriorated to the point that safety margins were eroded. It was no longer safe for me to continue.”
Since the swim Reid has continued to manage his kidney disease with no issues and is as healthy as he can be. He is grateful to wife Amy for her support and understanding as he passionately continues to swim for hours every week.
On his first day back in the ocean after the big swim, Amy surprised her husband by joining him at the Hardinge Rd third buoy.
“Until May 6 I didn’t really ‘get’ what this was all about,” she says. “I’ve heard all these stories but now I’ve seen it, the magnitude of it finally makes sense.”
And Jones, too, is in awe of Reid’s physical feat.
“He’s a strong swimmer but this is next level. He’s achieved something very special. I have no doubt he will do it one day.”
– Jeff Reid would like to thank Hawke's Bay companies The Apple Press and Napier Port for their generous support.
Read all about it: Five things you didn’t know about Jeff Reid
1) Reid’s swimming prowess is all the more incredible as his left arm is permanently bent after it was broken when he was a teen.
2) Despite swimming Cook Strait as a 14-year-old, his school sports prize was that year awarded to someone else.
3) As a surf lifesaver, he has saved a number of people from drowning along Napier’s Marine Parade.
4) Every morning before a swim, he takes a broom from his beat-up car and sweeps the Hardinge Rd swimmers’ outdoor shower.
5) Jeff Reid is going to have another go at swimming Cook Strait.
“I repeat all that I am,
“Stroke after stroke in cadence,
“Sensory to a beating heart,
“Strangely, I seek nothing more.”
From the poem The Glistening Of Water – Wai o Te Rarapa, by Davey Jones.
It is Friday May 6, 2022. Autumn in New Zealand. The night-time swimmer is 50-year-old Jeff Reid and he’s trying to cross the treacherous Cook Strait. Incredibly, Reid has already swum this challenging passage back when he was just 14. Today, the father of two, aims to earn the record for the longest period of time between two crossings.
“I want to see if I can do it again because I don’t want my legacy to be that I swam it when I was 14.”
But there’s another reason the Napier Port marine team leader wants to swim. A few years ago, he and wife Amy learned that Reid has polycystic kidney disease, which causes the deterioration of kidney function with the eventuality of regular dialysis.
“I don’t know how long my body will support the necessary physical strain of the swim and the hours of cold-water training,” Reid says. “My undertaking to swim the Strait again is a challenge and a pleasure for myself, my wellbeing, and my sense of fulfilment.”
Cook Strait is the narrow gap that separates Aotearoa New Zealand’s North Island from the South Island. It’s where the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean meet and, at its narrowest point, it is 22km across. Powerful currents push through and, without warning, tidal rips flow one way and then the other. Traversing the Strait in a straight line is impossible and it’s expected Reid’s swim will be more like 26km long.
The earliest known Cook Strait swim was in the mid-18th century by Māori woman Hinepoupou, of the Ngāti Kuia tribe.
But it was New Zealander Barrie Devenport’s 1962 swim that gripped the nation’s attention. Devenport became the Sir Edmund Hillary of swimming and since then swimmers from around the world have been lured by the challenge.
Cook Strait’s inclusion in Ocean’s Seven – an international marathon-swimming challenge of seven channel swims – has only increased its popularity.
After Devenport, Wellington’s Philip Rush became New Zealand’s master of endurance swimming. Rush is a two-time double Cook Strait crosser and holds the record for the fastest double and triple English Channel crossings.
Now running the Cook Strait Swim guiding company, Rush is the ideal person to help Reid across. A straight talker, Rush says as well as a strong swimmer, a successful crossing requires luck around weather, tides, and temperatures.
“It’s not an easy piece of water to get across . . . no two days are the same. That’s the nature of the beast and why it’s the hardest swim in the world.”
Only one in every four of Rush’s swimmers makes it across.
Rush is helped by others who will crew two vessels during each swim attempt. Today, skipper Chris McCallum and navigator Joy Griffiths are in the 38-foot support boat Tangaroa, named for the Māori and Polynesian god of the sea. The pair are responsible for planning and safely executing today’s passage. Their ability to calmly gather and interpret weather patterns and tides from their observations, national reference material, and electronic reports, dictates who makes it home.
During the day Rush will direct Reid from close proximity in an inflatable rescue boat (IRB). He asks for two things from his swimmers: consistent speed, and that he or she does exactly as he asks.
Corey Fairbairn, a firefighter, will drive the IRB. “I look forward to these days because it’s only a handful of people that get to do this, have the ability to do this, and it’s special to help facilitate that.”
Also supporting Reid is his American-born teacher wife, Amy, a sunny-day swimmer who also loves New Zealand’s bush life. Today she’s feeling proud but she has a queasy stomach and wonders if its seasickness or nerves. The couple’s children Frankie (12) and Lucy (9) have stayed home with their grandparents.
Long-time friend Davey Jones – also a long-distance swimmer – is also on board. When he’s not swimming, he’s a predator trapper committed to the ecological restoration of New Zealand. He will swim alongside his friend if Reid needs encouragement or a pacer.
And completing the support team is part-time ocean swimmer and full-time writer Hayley Redpath.
Reid’s pairing with Rush is symbolic: in 1987, on the same day, they both swam Cook Strait. The young men never met and so today, as Tangaroa makes her bumpy way from the North Island to the South, they connect and discuss the day ahead.
The crossing will be from the South Island to the North Island, but in order to navigate the shortest distance between the two, Reid will actually swim in a south-easterly direction.
During the crossing he will have to push through two or more tides that move in firstly from his left, then from his right. These tides act like powerful rivers running at right angles to the direction he needs to go.
Rush says today's sea conditions are the best since Reid began waiting in March for a favourable window. He says swimming is about more than just brute strength. “It’s a matter of getting the weather and tides right.”
In the over 20 years he’s been guiding, he’s had only 150 out of 570 swimmers achieve their goal.
By the time Tangaroa has completed the two-hour crossing from Mana Cruising Club in the North Island to near Cape Koamaru on Arapawa Island (considered part of the South Island), Reid just wants to get in the water. It’s been weeks of waiting and the green-blue ocean is inviting him in.
After a kiss for Amy, Reid joins Rush and Fairbairn in the IRB and motors the few metres over to the South Island. Without fanfare he slips into the water, swims to, and touches the cliff rock. It’s 10.15am.
“I was euphoric because it was so lovely. Usually, I dive down and have a little play, but I knew I had to get going.”
The sun creates sparkles of light that dance along the ocean. Reid describes it as glorious. When he swam the Strait in 1987 the water temperature was 12 degrees Celsius so today’s 17 is easy to manage. He settles into a rhythm.
Like all elite open-water swimmers, Reid has a high arm cadence. He turns his arms over 75 times a minute and he’ll maintain it all day.
From the bow of Tangaroa Jones can see his friend hasn’t gone out too hard. “He’s in a nice gear, not taking a lot of energy out of himself.”
Many people think that swimming power comes from the arms, says Jones, but it’s the back that plays the more important role. “Look at the back on that bugger,” he laughs. “Two-thirds of him is body and then he’s got these dinky little legs.”
Amy is pleased he’s in the water. She rings her parents-in-law to let them know. Thirty-six years ago, it was Ray and Mary Reid who were in the support vessel watching their son traverse Cook Strait. Ray is emotional and Amy confirms she’ll stay in touch.
The first three hours are blissful for swimmer and onlookers alike. At around 1.15pm Reid and the support crew enjoy their respective lunches. While Reid tucks into another bottle of nutritional formula mixed with hot oat milk, the support vessel crew devour mince pies and biscuits. Amy likens this part of the day to childbirth. “One person is doing all the work while the other sits on the side-line eating a sandwich yelling ‘yay’!”
By now Reid is 8.2km in. Due to some tidal push it’s not as far as the co-ordinators – or Reid – had hoped, but with everything else going so well it’s only a minor concern. Reid gives himself over entirely to Rush’s directions. “I had to listen to him, trust him, and all day I put my head down and just did just what he asked.”
Just after 2.45pm Reid makes it to halfway. He breaks a Rush rule when he pauses his swimming and yells to everyone “I’m happy!” Rush chastises him but then gives the crowd more: “He’s going good!”
Reid is better than good. He feels free and fast as the sun warms his back and shoots beams through the water. “It was so pleasurable. I had people say you’ve got to enjoy the process and I did. Even when the fumes of Tangaroa smelt terrible I turned it into a positive because I knew it meant everyone was close.”
But by 3pm the mood on Tangaroa is darkening. The bowed heads of skipper McCallum and navigator Griffiths almost touch as they pore over a navigational chart. “He’ll have to have his headlights on,” forewarns McCallum, alluding to a night swim. For the first time today, Reid’s support team are worried.
A powerful tide means Reid is being pushed strongly to the south. The further he goes, the more the North Island’s rugged coastline retreats.
“This whole mess of Cook Strait water is going straight down there,” says McCallum, pointing to the Pacific Ocean. He likens this tide to the flow of water in New Zealand’s mighty Waikato River, and says it’s extremely tough to swim across. “Today, the tide is stronger.”
Reid doesn’t realise how far he’s slipping down the Strait but he does find it odd he can no longer see the windmills on the North Island’s coastline. He continues swimming 75 strokes a minute, at times 80, and follows the course of the IRB. He hears Rush yell that the South Island is now history.
An hour passes. More fix points are taken, and Amy is nervous. “I’m worried he will miss the land.”
By 4.15pm Reid’s been swimming for six hours and covered 17.8km, but he’s whooshing down the centre of Cook Strait faster than he’s moving towards land. There’s a crackle of static from the two-way radio and Rush calls from the IRB for an update. “The good news is that he has gone forward in the past half hour,” McCallum tells him, “but the bad news is, he has gone down probably two miles [3.7km].”
Rush has watched that scenario unfold. “We just have to keep chipping away.”
As the sun begins to set, skipper McCallum announces he’s “getting ready for the stressful bit”. He asks his passengers to tidy the vessel while he transfers torches, navigational lights, and warm clothes to Rush and Fairbairn. Amy’s stomach is churning with nerves.
Reid, though, isn’t worried at all. He’s just been told he is 6km from the North Island. As he turns to breathe, he steals glances at the sky as it moves through deep orange to smoky blue, then grey. He switches his tinted goggles for clear ones that have a navigational light affixed. On every breath he searches for the IRB, his North Star, his Matariki, and doesn’t even notice the Interislander ferry Valentine as it passes close by.
At 6.08pm Tangaroa’s darkening cabin is empty but for writer Redpath and navigator Griffiths. As Griffiths lays down her tools she murmurs “he’s not going to do this”.
The next two hours are testament to Reid’s swimming prowess and mental strength. While perplexed to learn he’s 6km, then 7km from shore, he guesses it’s the tides. He’s calm because he’s got plenty in the tank and an extra kilometre at the end isn’t going to break him.
Instead, he’s thinking about night swimming, “like wearing a blindfold in the water”. He’s using earplugs and is experiencing the world through touch alone.
He breaks his swimming into chunks that match his favourite swim loop in Napier. “That’s the first buoy, the second buoy, I was marking it along in my mind.”
Darkness envelopes him, a shimmering river of stars appears overhead, and for Reid, time slips easily by.
Time isn’t as fluid on board Tangaroa. Amy is quiet and marks each passing minute with a glance at her phone. She asks Griffiths to explain what’s happening. The crew are waiting for the slack tide that will give Reid a chance to swim in still waters before it turns him around and, they hope, pushes him towards the coast.
With his trajectory south, the North Island’s Oteranga Bay is now a possible finishing point. Rugged and rocky, it’s where the underground Cook Strait communications cable comes ashore.
“Earlier in the day I felt joy, excitement, love and pride,” Amy says “In the past couple of hours it’s got really harrowing.”
There are four kilometres to go when the slack tide arrives and arrests Reid’s southerly slide. From afar, friends and family can see Reid’s progress unfold via a GPS tracker app on their phones. They watch as he turns back on himself almost 180 degrees, leaving a line shaped like an umbrella handle.
But there’s something that the virtual audience can’t see . . . as well as having to cross over the new strong north-moving tide, he must also swim through worsening weather.
Reid notices the change in the weather and sea state. When he turns his head to breathe, dark unseen waves smack into his mouth, and his throat hurts from the sea water. Swell disrupts his left-arm stroke. In the IRB, Rush and Fairbairn are also getting tossed around. They’re willing Reid on but they’re growing increasingly wet and cold. They give Reid hot Complan, tell him it’s his last feed and to push hard. Reid understands: “this is the last lap, I’m going to make it”.
In the rolling Tangaroa, crockery rattles and a water bottle falls from the table. McCallum calls for everyone to sit down. Jones shouts his support to Reid one last time then takes a seat in the stern. Amy cuts off a phone call and tucks into a corner.
While everyone waits anxiously, Reid battles on. He moves his arms powerfully despite the coal-black waves breaking over him. He sometimes struggles to see the IRB. “I was thinking ‘shouldn’t I be getting there now?’.” He’s only one kilometre from shore but over the past hour the tide has brought him to a standstill.
McCallum is mindful that, regardless of how this swim ends, there’s nearly two hours of motoring required to get back to Mana Cruising Club. In the pitch black he momentarily loses sight of the IRB and it unnerves him. He radios the IRB crew. “It’s starting to get a bit nasty, and we’ve got to get home remember?”
He's a kilometre offshore and so is the swimmer and IRB crew, but they're not getting any closer and the weather is getting worse.
Knowing they’re close to land Rush asks Reid for 10 minutes of hard swimming to see if he can get across the river-like tide. Reid responds, energised and eager to get the swim over with. He reaches down through years of ocean swimming and finds stamina. With no clue as to which direction he swims he churns through the water. “I really dug it in for those 10 minutes.”
Every now and then Jones can see Reid’s goggles’ light as his friend etches a tiny blue groove into the distance.
Over the sound of the worsening weather Rush radios from the IRB, and McCallum tells him they are 300m further out from the beach than they were an hour ago. The final radio exchanges between the swim coordinator and the captain play out over two minutes. Their conversation is a mix of deliberation, care, and kindness. The crew is disappointed, McCallum says, “but we need to get home safely, and we need to get home for the swimmer, so he can swim it again if he needs to”.
Rush hates having to tell Reid it is over.
“This guy hasn’t got hypothermia. The water temperature is amazing. He’s had a 75-80 stroke rate pretty much all the way. He has worked so hard to get there, and there is nothing you can do. In the end being so f****n close, it just does your head in.”
It’s 9.43pm when he leans over the side of the IRB and tells Reid he’s actually just slipped backwards 300m: “We’ve got to pull you.”
Trusting his team, Reid accepts it with an obedient “okay” and seconds later is hauled from the rough water into the IRB.
He’s coherent and polite with the men who’ve been his lifeline for the past 33km. When Griffiths stops the clock Reid has been swimming for 11 hours, 26 minutes, and 56 seconds. “He’s just swum so well,” she says quietly.
Onboard Tangaroa, Reid eats potato chips and sporadically talks to those around him. Rush and Fairbairn secure the IRB to Tangaroa then Reid reaches out to get Rush’s attention. Through a crunchy mouthful of chippies he says “thank you”. The men laugh when nearly in unison they both say, “I tried”.
Sir Edmund Hilary once said of his 1953 Mt Everest summit that he hadn’t “conquered” the world’s tallest mountain, Everest had merely relented. Today, Cook Strait was unrelenting.
Back home in Napier, Reid says he's overjoyed that on May 6, 2022, he swam farther and longer than ever before. The day was magical, and he couldn’t have wished for anything more.
It’s important to him that his own lack of swimming ability or mental stamina were not the reasons the swim was abandoned. “I didn’t touch the rocks, but I never gave up.”
Reid recognises the efforts of the crew and agrees with their decision to pull him in. “As the tides worked against my swimming the sea state deteriorated to the point that safety margins were eroded. It was no longer safe for me to continue.”
Since the swim Reid has continued to manage his kidney disease with no issues and is as healthy as he can be. He is grateful to wife Amy for her support and understanding as he passionately continues to swim for hours every week.
On his first day back in the ocean after the big swim, Amy surprised her husband by joining him at the Hardinge Rd third buoy.
“Until May 6 I didn’t really ‘get’ what this was all about,” she says. “I’ve heard all these stories but now I’ve seen it, the magnitude of it finally makes sense.”
And Jones, too, is in awe of Reid’s physical feat.
“He’s a strong swimmer but this is next level. He’s achieved something very special. I have no doubt he will do it one day.”
– Jeff Reid would like to thank Hawke's Bay companies The Apple Press and Napier Port for their generous support.
Read all about it: Five things you didn’t know about Jeff Reid
1) Reid’s swimming prowess is all the more incredible as his left arm is permanently bent after it was broken when he was a teen.
2) Despite swimming Cook Strait as a 14-year-old, his school sports prize was that year awarded to someone else.
3) As a surf lifesaver, he has saved a number of people from drowning along Napier’s Marine Parade.
4) Every morning before a swim, he takes a broom from his beat-up car and sweeps the Hardinge Rd swimmers’ outdoor shower.
5) Jeff Reid is going to have another go at swimming Cook Strait.
“I repeat all that I am,
“Stroke after stroke in cadence,
“Sensory to a beating heart,
“Strangely, I seek nothing more.”
From the poem The Glistening Of Water – Wai o Te Rarapa, by Davey Jones.
