Looking up I saw Heike equally aground. I jumped out of the boat, but quickly sank to my knees in the mud. Even using the boat for buoyancy it was going to be a long haul ½ mile to those channel markers. It was going to be a longer haul yet. Heike refused to leave her kayak. “Marty,” she exclaimed in her calm, reasonable, German accented voice, “I think we are stuck.”

“Whaddya mean WE?” I thought of replying. But the look in Heike’s eye told me not to. Heike does not like to get messy. Heike does not like to play in the mud. Heike was going to sit there until Florida froze over before getting her feet stuck in that stuff. And so Heike in her kayak and I in my canoe, quietly sat there in the mouth of Spring Warrior Creek, waiting.

It was not much above 34 degrees and the 15 knot wind blew hard at us in our exposed location. We had some good clothing on, but our warmth depended on us being on the move, not sitting still. I looked at Heike in her paddling jacket, balaclava and spray skirt. She didn’t look any warmer than I, and I was getting pretty cold. I lay down on the lids of the cat litter buckets I use to carry gear. I started to doze and got colder. The tide wouldn’t really rise much for several hours. We were stranded.

Heike might have been willing to wait until Florida froze over before stepping into that mud, but, as the hour wore on, she began to think it was Heike freezing over that would occur much sooner. And an hour into our ordeal, Heike finally did a very unGermanic thing. She stepped from her boat into the mud, leaned on it for buoyancy, and began to slog her way seaward to the channel markers.

I watched her for quite a while. In the sucking mud she was making slow progress. But progress still. As she reached the first channel marker, I realized she was committed. There was no turning back for her. So I, too, got out of my boat, and leaning on it for buoyancy, began my own trudge seaward.

Eventually the tide came up enough, or we trudged seaward enough to barely float the boats. With paddles scraping the ground and muddy feet defacing our lovely hulls we struggled on to our next night’s rendezvous with destiny.

Marty Cooperman and Heike Robinson actually did manage to figure out the tides and successfully complete the Water Trail. But it took a long afternoon with a strong garden hose to undo the consequences of their grounding.

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