EDITOR'S NOTE: Today's column is a continuation of Sunday's column, which can be found at www.honoluluadvertiser.com.

Linda Kaiser became the only person to conquer all eight of Hawai'i's swimmable channels when earlier this month she successfully swam 'Alenuihaha between the Big Island and Maui, the most challenging of all.

Only two other people have made the 'Alenuihaha crossing, a distance of about 30 miles.

Kaiser, 59, started training in April, swimming 25 miles a week and going on 6-to-8 hour swims on weekends.

She set her sights on making the swim in September, specifically the second or fourth week when she'd have a half-moon to light her way.

As the date drew closer, she checked the NOAA weather forecast daily, sometimes twice a day. She figured out the currents and the tides, so that when the tide was falling it would help push her out and when it was rising, it would pull her in on the other shore. On Thursday, Sept. 10, the weather service reported the trade winds were dying down. On Friday Sept. 11, Kaiser called a friend on the Big Island who reported the channel looked glassy. She flew out that day and took a boat to 'Upolu point, planning to begin her swim at 11 o'clock at night.

The biggest challenge for a channel swimmer is the wind, and the winds come up when the sun rises, so for a long haul, channel swimmers start out at night. "When the wind kicks up, there are huge waves, so you gotta be more than halfway across by then," Kaiser said.

By 8 p.m., she could barely sit still and told her three escorts they were going at 9 p.m. She made a symbolic offering of gin in a ti leaf, said a prayer and headed out into the dark. Despite her careful planning, she forgot that the moon would rise later in the night, so she was in pitch black for the first three hours until the moon came up at midnight.

"When you're out there in the ocean, you have to believe in yourself strongly that you can handle a situation," she said.

Every ocean-going athlete knows there are sharks out there, but the threat seems theoretical until you see it firsthand. Earlier this year, Kaiser was on her friend's escort boat in the same channel when he was bitten by a cookie-cutter shark, an animal that grabs on, twists, and pulls out a chunk of flesh from its victim. It was a rare type of shark attack because humans don't usually go where these sharks feed, out in deep water at night. Kaiser knew they were out there, but tried not to think of it. She called it the "big elephant" everyone was trying to ignore.

People have asked if there are spirits out there with her during the crossing. "Absolutely," she says. "They're all around. My dad is there. My friend Janice is always there as a sea bird."

She was about 6 miles from Maui when she spotted a fin. "I thought, 'Oh, a dolphin! Yes!' " Of course, it wasn't a dolphin. It was a shark, about 10 feet away.

"At that point, I'm pissed," she said, laughing. "I'm thinking, 'I'm not getting out of this water now! I'm too close!' I'm sending out all my bad vibes and just emanating poison."

The shark went along its own way without bothering her.

"Sharks have a bad rap, but they're actually really curious. Sometimes they just want to check you out," she said.

After 17 hours in the water, she came ashore at Maui's Kaupo gulch, a remote stretch of rocky shoreline. "There's no adulation when I get there. Nobody is there. So I sit for a while, think 'I did it,' then swim back to the boat and go home."

She doesn't plan more channel swims because she says, "I've done them." It goes back to the question of "why."

"You do it for yourself," she says. "I think it's just seeing if I can really do it."

She remembers being a kid when famed Hawai'i swimmer Keo Nakama made the first Kaiwi channel crossing in 1961, swimming from Moloka'i to O'ahu. "Cars lined the coastline to watch him come in at Sandy Beach," she said. "There was the roar of the crowd and he was covered in leis. I remember thinking, 'I want to do that, and when I do, I'll wear a red suit and represent Kalani High School."

Did she wear a red suit?

"You know, I think I did."

For an official list of Hawai'i channel swimmers, go to Hawaiiswim.org and click on the link on the left side that says "Hawaii Channel."