Pair of former Ketchikan legislators complete 925-mile row from Seattle

Working together in long, tandem strokes, Terry Gardiner and John Sund rowed beneath looming cruise ships along Ketchikan's waterfront on July 10, then turned into Bar Harbor to meet a couple dozen friends and family waiting for them on shore. It was the end of a 925-mile rowing trip from Seattle to Ketchikan for the two men, born and raised in Ketchikan, now in their 70s.

The two have been partners in personal and professional escapades for years. Gardiner served in the Alaska House of Representatives through the 1970s, with Sund working as his chief of staff. Sund was elected to the House in 1983 and served until 1988.

In 1981, Gardiner, Sund, and a team of partners formed Silver Lining Seafoods. Starting with a small processing plant in Ketchikan, the company grew to include shoreside locations in six Alaska communities. The company later merged with Lafayette Fisheries and its fleet of floating processors to form NorQuest Seafoods.

Gardiner and Sund retired after the company was purchased by Trident Seafoods. They both now reside in the Seattle area.

But retirement opened up a completely new chapter for the two. Gardiner estimates they've accumulated about 4,500 miles of hiking, and now rowing, in recent years. They've hiked the length of the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail between Canada and Mexico, as well as the 800-mile Arizona Trail.

The two actually started their rowing trip last year, intending to make the voyage in a single year. But a health issue for Gardiner in Port Hardy, British Columbia, resulted in a Canadian Coast Guard medivac and the trip was curtailed. Gardiner recuperated without incident, and this year they trailered the boat back to Port Hardy and resumed the trip.

It didn't start out well.

At the end of the first day, Sund jumped out of the boat and onto a log atop a pile of rocks to scout a camping spot. The log promptly collapsed beneath him, crashing onto the oars and the side of the boat below. Sund suffered a gash to his leg that is still healing a month later, but the boat wasn't damaged.

On the second day, they encountered fiercely towering ocean swells and wave action termed "clapotis waves," or "rebound waves," where incoming ocean swells make landfall and bounce back, creating a wildly churning sea. They finally sought refuge for a break by hanging onto a giant kelp bed, as an anchor, behind a small island with a little protection from the wind.

"It was the biggest, most dangerous, scary part of the trip," Gardiner said.

Despite the dramatic start, the two raved about the people they met along the way, the cultural and historic aspects of the country they traveled through, and the enormous amount of wildlife they encountered daily.

The food wasn't bad, either, with tacos made daily with fresh salmon, halibut and ling cod.

Near the end of the trip there were some sentimental moments, too.

Gardiner started gillnetting in the Tree Point area, south of Ketchikan, when he was 16, and fished there for 14 years. As they rowed through that stretch, Gardiner regaled Sund with stories of his adventures - and mishaps.

"For 10 miles every rock had a story - and it usually had a net on top of it," Sund recalled. "So first you had the story of how the net got on the rock, and then you had the story of how he got the net OFF the rock."

On their last night the two camped in a small cove Sund calls "Pot Cover Cove." He remembers commercial trolling there as a youth with his father, Art Sund. To wait out stormy weather, his dad had rigged a stainless steel wire around a cedar tree on shore. He would set an anchor from the bow of the boat off the beach, then back the stern of the boat up to the cable, latch onto it, and secure the boat between the two points.

Some 60 years later, Sund and Gardiner spotted the cable still there.

"It was kind of a cool way, for me anyway, to end the trip," Sund said.

With the trip completed, there is the question of what to do with the 17-foot Whitehall rowboat.

Linda Gardiner and DeeDee Sund are reportedly lobbying to sell the boat and recoup some of their expenditures. "The boys" won't exactly commit to a plan. "There's a little push/pull there," Sund admitted.

For now, they're going to take the boat to their cabin at Hollis on Prince of Wales Island. They'll remove the solar panels and other modifications they made for their long-distance travel.

"And then we're going to row our grandkids around," Gardiner said.

Heidi Ekstrand is a former editor of the Ketchikan Daily News, and currently serves as chair of the Ketchikan Community Foundation Advisory Board.