Brutal!  That’s pretty much how Bill described the day.  Winds were really bad and he was paddling right into them.  Around 4:00pm he took a route I had never seen him take before in the Ten Thousand Islands, nor was it in any of the float plans left with his pit crew.   Apparently Bill had gotten this route from a couple of fellow Watertribers and it was exactly what he needed to get to get out of the wind and into Checkpoint 2.  (I will be sure and do a proper shout-out to them in a future blog–bad cell phone reception once again left me with a puzzle to piece together.)  Technology has given me a lot of peace of mind allowing me to know exactly where Bill is (as long as the SPOT is functioning properly).  However, communication is still so difficult.  I am lucky to get the one call a day and hope that reception is good enough to hear him.  But when there is important information to get to him, I can only send him a text and/or wait until he calls and then it can be too late.  Tonight was a perfect example of this.  I was glad to see him keep going until he got to CP2 as Chief announced today there were no more deadline extensions.  The deadline for CP2 was 3/7 @ 10:00am.  [Insert sigh]  In sum, Bill made it to CP2, getting some sleep, heading out early, and would REALLY like a break in the weather.  I didn’t have the heart to tell him it would be the same tomorrow — ummm today — oh goodnight!  🙂