Jan.19:

I peeked out through the shade at 6:30 to see a dead calm but cloudy day. That is a perfect rowing day. Waking Heather with the preparation of coffee, I conveyed the message that I had had my day of rest and was itching to get on the water to close that last gap in our trip. After our coffee took effect, we efficiently dressed, packed and were in the car by 7:30. Route 1 was under construction and, in spite of it’s being Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday; the crews were busily slowing down the traffic headed to the Keys. It took us an hour to do the ½ hour drive to Alabama Jack’s restaurant and boat ramp a mile or so east of the bridge we had taken out at two days before. I did not feel that the filthy, unpatrolled parking area next to that bridge at Steamboat Creek was a safe place to park the car all day.

We were on the water, rowing out of the canal connecting Alabama Jack’s to the main channel of the ICW by 9:20. A light mist was in the air that caused Heather to put on her rain gear for the first time on the trip. But the warm temperature and mirror smooth water was a complete distraction from any rain for me and it soon ended anyway. This was to be the longest straight-line stretch of smooth water I have ever rowed. Heather had wanted to capture the puddles reaching astern in a picture but it turned out that the glare of light from the South made it quite difficult. One has to be rowing to see them. Most of all one has to be rowing to feel them. Each pair represents a swing of the back, a squeeze of the arms and a push of the legs in a unison that connects the rower and the boat to the water leaving the puddles to mark where you had been during that brief exertion.

Our destination was over the horizon in the direction that our GPS told us. Heather had entered the last waypoint when we landed at the beach near the Deering mansion on the 17^th. That this little black object could lead us there seemed dubious but I thought I could help it if it had trouble. One starts to learn the shoreline pretty well after staring at it long enough. In fact, last year I thought I knew exactly which island I was looking at and it proved to be one about 8 miles away. So, I put my trust in the GPS and kept going the direction it pointed to. I will be honest in saying I really did not believe the distance it said was ahead. I had estimated about 18 miles on the chart. This little black box was telling me it was 24 miles! Well, it was correct in every way.

The miles slid by as we watched the turtle grass, sponges, and coral pass under us. The water seemed to be at most 5 to 6 feet deep most of the time with some sections less than 2 feet. I could feel the drag of shallow water even though we did not make any contact with the bottom. I do not fully understand how this can happen but do know that when there is less than about a foot of water under the boat there is some turbulence that creates more than the normal friction. So without looking at the depth I can feel when we are in shallow water. I wonder in my mind whether some law of fluid dynamics was considered in the design of my hull for rowing in shallow water. I wonder if this same law has anything to do with the performance of toilets! Now you really know the condition of my mind!

We past Black Point at about 2:30 and the GPS still said we had 4 miles to go. It couldn’t be correct I thought. Black Point had appeared to be only a mile or so away when we had landed at this destination the last time. I put on some power as a light headwind was just starting to be felt. It was welcome because the bugs had been biting us badly. My sweat must have drawn them from shore, I thought. But we were miles from shore. What was a no-see-um doing out here? Then we smelled the odor of a huge Mt. Trashmore we had seen on the horizon behind Black Point. I think we were passing through the approach of a million no-see-ums heading its direction. The wind cooled me and relieved their biting. My wake was absolutely straight as I pushed ahead to prove the GPS wrong. The miles shown gradually diminished and the shore approached. I could not yet see the beach. It was time to wind it up for the finish sprint as I remember doing years ago. Surely this can’t be true. The little black box was right on the nose and its "miles to destination." number went to zero as I came to a stop right off the beach where Heather had set the waypoint.

We had come 24.5 miles to close the final gap in our planned route. It seemed rather anticlimactic, however, because I was not ready to call it the end of our trip. We will "end" this journey when we have covered every stretch of water from Key West to the Canadian border. This goal gets clearer with every puddle pushed astern. Finishing our planned trip cannot be the finish line. There were no cheers, no boat horns, no pulling boats together to claim the shirts of the vanquished, just the satisfaction of feeling good about feeling healthier and stronger.