Cook Strait Baloon Crossing Difficult and Hazardous

"APART from being one of the most notorious stretches of water in the world, Cook Strait holds a facination for men of daring. It cries out to be conquered — and conquered it has been in many ways. "However, the fact that one of man's earliest forms of flight, the balloon, should be one of the last, so far, to achieve this particular crossing is of more than passing interest in this jet age.