Linda Kaiser has an old black-and-white photo of the beginning of all this.

She is the only person to swim all eight Hawai'i channels, the treacherous spans of water between islands. This month, at age 59, she completed the last swimmable channel, the hardest one of all, 'Aleinuihaha between the Big Island and Maui, a distance of 30 miles.

Kaiser was swimming before she could walk. She has a photo of her father carrying her in the water at the warm springs in Hilo. She's less than a year old in the picture, her baby legs stretched out behind her like she's ready to launch.

"The ocean is my passion, my sanctuary, my church. It is where I feel the most peace."

She talks this way as if she's out there relaxing on a floatie off a white-sand beach, not churning through pitch-black sharky waters in the dead of night. It's not that she doesn't get scared, or that she likes being afraid, more that she's figured out how to swim through it.

"When I'm swimming, it's like my mind is going somewhere else. I write long letters to friends, I do huge math problems that don't have an end."

She was born on the Big Island in 1950 and raised in Kuli'ou'ou in the house she still lives in. She graduated from Kalani High school in 1969. Much of her childhood was spent in the water, at family trips to Hanauma Bay, fourth grade Red Cross swimming lessons at Ala Moana and PE classes in a pool that used to be in 'Aina Haina.

She remembers spending entire days at the Waikiki Natatorium with friends. The kids always outlasted the mothers, who would break chaperone duty into three shifts. "One mom would bring us in the morning. Another mom would bring us lunch and a third mom would bring us home at the end of the day."

Along with swimming, Kaiser has done canoe paddling, all 29 Tinman triathlons, and 4-H horse shows here and on the Mainland. She started her own business, The Pool Maid pool cleaning service, in 1984, something she loves because it's peaceful and keeps her close to water. In 1989, she did her first channel swim after her friend Janice Vierra pointed out that all the channel swimmers were men. "She said, 'If they can do it, we can do it!' " That year, the two women swam the 'Au'au channel between Lana'i and Maui. In 1990, they swam the Pailolo channel between Maui and Moloka'i and, in 1991, the Kalohi channel between Lana'i and Moloka'i. Vierra passed away in 2000, but Kaiser says she's still with her on every channel crossing, taking the form of a sea bird that watches over her as she swims.

Channel swimmers in Hawai'i have what Kaiser calls a "loose organization" with their own set of rules. Channel swimmers in other areas, like California's Catalina Island, require swimmers to get out of the water at least to their knees at the end of the swim. In Hawai'i, that rule isn't feasible since sometimes the swimmers end up at a rocky coastline or the sheer cliff of an island where there's no way to get out of the water. "The rule here is to start the swim with no water behind you and to end the swim with no water in front of you," Kaiser said.

The other important rule is that the swimmer can't touch anything while swimming in the water. If they grab on to the escort boat to rest for a minute, that disqualifies the attempt. That has led channel swimmers to devise clever ways of sustaining nourishment during the long hours in the water. A "feeder" in the escort boat holds out a long stick with a water bottle affixed in a wire cage on the end. A flexible tube from the bottle acts like a straw, so Kaiser can get her "special secret sauce" nutrition formula once an hour without touching anything. There are two people on the boat, the captain and the feeder, and a third who paddles a kayak near the swimmer at night. But there's very little talking. At night, there really isn't anything. It's almost total sensory deprivation.

"Put a bag over your head and lock yourself in the closet with no lights on. That's how dark it is," she said. "You can't see where the black sky ends and the water begins. You don't hear anything. You don't see anything in the black night. There's nothing that can prepare you for that."

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesday, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172.