In Jill Fredston's book Rowing to Latitude we read about her summer adventures, from rowing around Iceland to rowing the islands around Alaska, her home state. Jill describes the story of her travels with her husband, Doug. Together they learn and trek around the world in their two very distinct boats. Beginning on the shores of the sound side on Long Island Jill shares how she acquired her extreme love of the outdoors and more specifically her need to row. Everything that she does seems to be an adventure, be it her getting her dream job in Alaska or the expeditions Doug and she take every summer.
Jill began to row in her early years around Long Island and rowed competitively while doing crew at school in the United Kingdom, she has always felt at peace while taking stoke after stroke on the water. While she began going on expeditions in her teenage years Jill took much more elaborate trips after she got her job at the Alaskan Avalanche Center where she meet her husband and rowing partner Doug. Their first expedition, Seattle to Skagway, taught both Doug and Jill much more then they expected.
This first trip had more then enough hardships for duo. Not only where there simple hardships such as acquiring enough food for five months on the water but also nature's extreme torments. "Inside Passage waterways are flooded and drained every six hours by some of the biggest tides in the world this water is squeezed from open straits into narrow channels, like water from an eight-inch main being funneled into a hose, the result is a turmoil riotously strong currents steep-sided standing waves, cliff-like overfalls, and giant whirl-pools capable of sucking large objects into oblivion or ejecting them as if from a slingshot" (63). Nature's other inhabitants also are evident dangers for the two. Whales, in particular, when they surface, rarely care what is above them, so say a small sea kayak (what Doug is rowing) can very easily get caught on top of a breathing whale or worse yet, a feeding whale.