A man who braved the chilly waters of Lake Wakatipu for almost 19 hours to swim its length was treated for hypothermia after completing his marathon effort.
Ben Campbell-MacDonald donned a wetsuit with a hood and boots over thermals and was slathered in a layer of petroleum jelly to complete the 81km swim from Kingston to Glenorchy on Saturday.
After 18-and-a-half hours in the water conquering New Zealand's longest lake the 31-year-old Wellingtonian went to Lakes District Hospital with a bout of vomiting and hypothermia before being discharged.
His initial goal was to swim as far as Queenstown, but decided, in perfect conditions, to carry on which led to the hypothermia.
"Once you get to the top of the lake near Glenorchy you have the Dart and Rees River outflows coming directly into the lake, which drops the temperature by another few degrees. By that stage I was so close that I carried on, but I did get hypothermia, which we were prepared for," he told Fairfax.
Accompanied by a support crew on a supply boat which kept him topped up with food, including bananas and hot potatoes every 30 minutes, Mr Campbell-MacDonald was delighted to complete the swim after failing with a bid three years ago.
"In one sense it's a bit of a silly-bugger thing to do, but I think if you over-analyse the urge and motivation behind doing something like this, you'd end up second-guessing it.
"I can't really explain why I did it, but I'm really happy I did."
NZN