| seaworthy rowboat ever built.
It's like a '56 Chevy-reliable and safe," says Peter. "In rough water, it just
dances around and feels its way." Under pressure, however, Peter does admit that
"sometimes though you can get into trouble." Strangely enough, the only time Peter and Dick swamped coming up the coast to Alaska was not in the boat. It was in their tent. In a fit of exhaustion, they flopped on shore after a 12-hour day of pulling on the oars, wolfed down a couple of salmon apiece, and collapsed in their sleeping bags. A small miscalculation. They had pitched their tent below the high tide level on a coast that has some of the highest tides in the world. In the darkest part of the summer night on an island in Bntish Colurnbia, the sea lapped about the edges of their tent and floated it off on the waves, southward into the shipping lanes of the North Pacific Ocean."We were asleep. I remember turning over and feeling it was real comfortable, but also having a sense that something was not quite right. I didn't want to wake up. I was exhausted. I didn't want to deal with anything that was wrong. Finally, Dick woke up and |
said, 'Pete, don't
move. We're floating.' "We had seam-sealed the tent five times. It was totally water-proofed. But we were worried about concentrating the weight in any one place, figuring the whole thing would collapse. It was about two in the morning and dark out. We had no idea where we were. Carefully, Dick un-zipped the tent and jumped out into the 40-degree water and pitch dark. "At first it looked like we were about a mile from shore, but we were only about a football field away. The tide had lifted up the boat and all our pots and pans. The whole flotilla was floating out. Dick swam the tent to shore. I pulled in the boat. Then we swam around in the dark collecting things. The tide had peaked and had started moving out real fast. If we hadn't have woken up, we would have been swept around the corner into a huge shipping lane. Days later, we had visions of waking up and seeing a big ship bearing down on us. It would have ruined our day."Rowing the Inside Passage was really beautiful-narrow channels with forests of dark trees lining the edge, fog on the water, and whales spouting around the boat. From Seattle to |
"Rowing the Inside Passage was really beautiful - narrow channels with forests of dark trees lining the edge, fog on the water, and whales spouting around the boat. From Seattle to Glacier Bay, it was like a slow crescendo as the mountains got higher and the snow got lower down." |
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