60-mile Adventure Row completed!

Laura Brown eating up the final miles of her 60-mile Adventure Row

This weekend was a huge milestone for Rowing to Wild: successful completion of our first custom-designed Adventure Row. And not just any Adventure Row - a whopping 60-mile weekend to celebrate a dear friend’s 60th birthday (I can only hope to be able to do such a thing when I am 60!).

The indomitable Laura Brown and I set off from Belfast on Friday morning and rowed 30 miles south to Sheep Island, near Owl’s Head. Though fog obscured the beautiful vistas of the Islesboro archipelago, it didn’t hide the gray seals and harbor seals who popped up behind the boat at many points along the way. We even watched young harbor seal pups swimming with their mothers while we ate our lunch. We were glad that few other boats were out on the bay in the fog, and that the vast majority of the motors we heard turned out to be lawnmowers on shore or planes overhead.

Saturday turned out to have even worse fog, plus wind, so we chose to alter our plans and take a weather day. We enjoyed a day of wandering the island taking photos, eating good food, drinking hot tea, and napping!

On Sunday, the wind had died back down and though we had another foggy start, it soon burned off and we enjoyed beautiful calm seas for the first few hours, and then a light tail wind blew up to speed us on our way. We passed the harbors of Rockland, Rockport, Camden, and Lincolnville. Took a brief rest stop on shore to stretch before making the final push for home. More seals made us laugh out loud with their surprised, sometimes frantic expressions as they surfaced behind the stern, seemingly flabbergasted to find themselves staring into human faces.

We pulled into Belfast amidst the only sunshine of the weekend and the cheers of a group of friends who gathered to celebrate Laura’s accomplishment!