Much of what happened in these pages could have happened last November or just aboout any November. Most of these events happened in November of 1993, which is significant because of the horrific floods that inundated the Nation's heartland that year. However, little did we think about some of those imminent dangers that awaited us that fall when we steered the "Harper's Ferry" sailboat out of its home port into the mammoth Lake Superior for the last time. We were literally and figuratively launching a journey that, to the best of anyone's knowledge, had never been taken before. No one, as far as we knew, ever piloted a 47-foot, deep-draft Gulfstar sailboat all the way from Washburn, Wisconsin to Freeport, Texas. It was the first leg of a water-logged odyssey that would take "We Three: Fred, the Ferry Boat, and Me" some 2,400 miles through three of the Great Lakes and down the nation's Inland Waterways - the Chicago, the Illinois, and the Mississippi rivers - to the Gulf of Mexico. In making this epic voyage, never did we think we would be risking our lives many times during the month-long journey. I, for one, thought it was simply going to be like a walk in the park. It turned out to be more like a walk in a park full of muggers.