Turkish man becomes oldest person to swim Cook Strait
A 63-year-old Turkish man has become the oldest person to swim Cook Strait, and he plans to make it Guinness World Record official.
Kamil Resa Alsaran touched land on the North Island’s Terawhiti coastline on Tuesday after entering the water at Perano Head in the Marlborough Sounds early that morning,
Translated by his son Onur, Alsaran said his near 12½-hour journey across the point to point distance of about 23km was the most difficult swim of his life, “by a large margin”.
Alsaran had taken part in around 35 marathon swims, either as a swimmer or as a coach, and was hoping to complete the Oceans Seven challenge, consisting of seven open-water channel swims around the globe. He had encountered a shark when he swam across a strait in Japan, and became the oldest man to swim the North Channel from Ireland to Scotland in 2019.
But with unpredicted wind slowing him down on Tuesday, Alsaran described the conditions in the water as “like a washing machine”.
“This is the swim that he vomited the most,” Onur said.
Cook Strait was the fifth on the Oceans Seven list Alsaran had ticked off, and he was now applying for a Guinness World Record as the oldest person ever to do it.
The previous record holder was believed to be Japanese man Toshi Ogawa, aged 60 when he swam across in 2015.
Being able to swim the strait at his age made Alsaran “very happy”.
However, he did have mixed feelings after reaching the coast east of Wellington on Tuesday, having travelled to Picton last year to do the swim, but being unable to do so due to issues with paperwork. “He was happy, but bittersweet ... and he’s very glad that he will hopefully be able to enter a Guinness World Record,” Onur said. “He’s a little bit stubborn and he doesn’t quit.”
Picton-based Katabatic Charters skipper Grant Orchard, who facilitated trips for those wanting to swim the strait from Marlborough, skippered the boat that travelled alongside Alsaran as he made his way across. “It’s a great thing to be a part of, it’s super-rewarding ... It’s a really big thing. Like, it’s not as if they just jump in the water and take off.”
The tidal conditions on Tuesday were “excellent”, but Orchard said unexpected wind of around 12-14 knots took several hours to gradually ease. “So Kamil had to suffer through it, and he did,” Orchard said.
“Every fisherman that I talked to said the wind was not supposed to be there … it was quite testing conditions.”