![]() ![]() He was exhausted and hypothermic, battling 30 knot winds and two metre swells that threatened to bring his new fantasy friends crashing down on him. “I’ve never had hallucinations before but I’ve also never stayed awake for that period of time before.” When the snowman appeared, Ridler had been awake for 36 hours, most of them spent attempting to swim 100km between Great Barrier Island and Auckland. “At that stage it was definitely getting harder to determine exactly what was going on,” Ridler laughs over Zoom, safely back on dry land. ![]() Drawing on his already-dwindling energy reserves, his voice rang through the night air: “Are you guys real?” When he peered below, the ocean floor gleamed with luxurious courtyard tiling. Then, around him, picture frames and solar panels began to bob on the surface of the sea. ![]() ![]() On the nearby support boat, a snowman and a giant potato stood side by side. Alex Casey talks to ultramarathon swimmer Jono Ridler about exactly what happens when you swim in the sea for nearly two days straight – and why he put himself through it.Īs Jono Ridler ploughed through the water on the second night of his ultramarathon swim, he caught a glimpse of something strange in the darkness of the Hauraki Gulf. ![]()
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