A man who was in the water for three hours after overturning his kayak would have died "if he hadn't had his lifejacket on", police say.
A witness called emergency services to report an overturned kayak in Auckland's Manukau Harbour on Tuesday.
The man was close to death when he was spotted by a police helicopter.
"As we got close enough, gave him a thumbs up and then he just immediately goes thumbs down, both hands. He didn't want to be there," one of the men in the chopper, who wished only to be known only as Constable Brown, told Seven Sharp.
A rescue swimmer jumped into the icy water to save him, while Constable Brown "jumped out the side to try and help him where I could from the water."
"His lips were shivering, he was blue all around his mouth, around his eyes and ears - just laid there, essentially, in the water."
The man had been in the water for three hours, he said, and "had written himself off as being gone forever" and "was sort of in the process of saying his goodbyes to his family" when he was found.
While the rescue mission "seemed like a long time," Constable Brown said it "was probably no more than 10 minutes."
Constable Brown said the man didn't initially believe the rescue was really happening, but says the man was "very grateful".
"He grabbed my hand and didn't let go. He was still real cold but if he hadn't had that lifejacket on, I don't think we would have been probably pulling him out alive, to be fair."
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