Author details kindnesses two lifeguards experienced rowing a lifeboat from A.C. to Florida in 1978
EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP — Back in 1978, Dan Steelman and friend Kelly O’Neill had a crazy idea — they would row a lifeguard boat from Atlantic City to Florida.
At the time they were lifeguards in Longport and Atlantic City, respectively. They had no support crew, no formal plan and no real means of communication, that being decades before the cell phone.
What they did have was an old Van Duyne lifeboat from the Atlantic City Beach Patrol, some camping gear and that youthful exuberance that led them to believe it was something they could accomplish.
Accomplish it, they did.
It took them three months, mostly using the Intracoastal Waterway, and Steelman and O’Neill successfully made the journey south, learning about the generosity of strangers along the way.
It has been almost a half-century since then, but after retiring a few years ago, Steelman finally had the time to sit down and write about their adventure. It’s in a book he published in June called “One Summer Dream: More Than Miles.”
Steelman and O’Neill both grew up on the water, with the author rowing on the bay off Longport and O’Neill surfing, in addition to the rowing they learned on their respective beach patrols.
“I’m not that big of a guy, but I learned how to maneuver a boat and how to set a course from my father,” Steelman said. His dad was a lifeguard as well.
There was just the love of being around the water for the two of them. Steelman was inspired by a movie when he was young — “The Endless Summer,” which came out in 1966 and was about a surfing trip around the world.
“That had a big impact on me,” he said.
The duo wanted to travel but didn’t have a big budget, so they talked about rowing their way down to Florida.
“Nobody really believed it was gonna happen,” he said. “It was a rainy night, we were sitting around, just goofing off, drinking beers, a group of us. And Kelly made the announcement.” The friends were like, “Yeah, sure, it’s one of your crazy schemes,” but O’Neill “had the personality that if he thinks he can do it, he’ll figure it out.”
It took a few weeks for the idea to sink in, then Steelman bought into it.
“We were lifeguards,” he said. “We row a lot. We’re in the boat all the time, so what’s holding us back?”
The Atlantic City Beach Patrol provided one of its old boats and some oars and the duo got together some camping gear, a cassette player and some cassette tapes. “We didn’t have a lot of money, the one thing we did have was music.”
After “fretting” about their plans for a few weeks, things snowballed and all of a sudden they realized it was truly going to happen. Steelman’s father was enthusiastic, but said the young men would have to figure it all out by themselves. It took another few weeks to get everything together, including a camp stove and planning the course.
“We really didn’t carry too much, but we carried everything we really needed in the boat. There was probably another 400 pounds of junk that we threw in the boat so we really knew we couldn’t go out in the ocean too much,” he said. “We decided to go on the Intracoastal Waterway.” The inland network of natural and artificial channels stretches all along the Atlantic Coast and beyond.
The pair left in September. They had built up a little fan club, in part thanks to radio interviews with the late Pinky Kravitz, a well-known figure in his day.
On the duo’s first day, they made it south to Sea Isle City.
“That’s when we started laughing, thinking this is insane,” Steelman recalled, but their first interaction with a stranger became one of “hundreds” of positive encounters they would have on their trip.
The man recognized them as the boys on the radio rowing to Florida. He let them stay in a garage he fixed up for summer rentals.
“It was just the nicest person you could have met along the way,” Steelman said. “That’s why I called the book ‘One Summer Dream: More Than Miles,’ because the kindness of people never ended.”
That repeated itself over and over again along the way. The book is about the many encounters they had, including being brought into people’s homes or aboard their boats.
Steelman didn’t want to give away the many anecdotes he had in the book, but did share one.
He and O’Neill anchored on a beach on Tybee Island, Ga. Two park rangers approached them and started asking questions. When they found out the young men were rowing their way from Atlantic City to Florida, “they were flabbergasted.” The rangers offered their enclosed porch nearby for a place the duo could stay for the night.
That night, a storm raged.
“It was the worst storm we had encountered so far and it was really wicked,” Steelman said. “We had taken some stuff off the boat, but left a lot in it.” (When the young men planned the trip, they planned on going after the main hurricane season and when they would have the best wind.)
When he and O’Neill got back to the boat the next morning, it was halfway buried in sand. The oars were gone. So were their supplies.
“Everything we had left in the boat except our cassette deck and our camera, stuff we could carry,” he said. “So we were done. We were sitting there in the sand. I remember holding my head in my hands. I wasn’t even looking up.
“It was early morning and out of the mist, I’m not exaggerating, this figure is walking down the beach and gets closer and closer. It turns out to be a priest.”
When the man, Father Tom, asked what was wrong, Steelman told him about their dilemma with the buried boat, the missing oars and missing supplies.
The priest turned around and pointed toward the now-calm ocean. He said, “What is that?”
“Kelly’s already bounding into the water and grabs it. It’s our duffel bag with all our clothes and stuff,” Steelman said. “We’re like, this is awesome, this is great, but we have no oars. All of our oars are gone.”
The priest tuned around again and said, “Look over there.”
“One by one, the oars started floating by,” he said. They retrieved all but one spare of each set of oars.
The priest took them back to his parish to get them situated and bought them a new camp stove. Steelman said his only regret about the heartwarming encounter was that they wanted to go back and thank him after finishing their journey, but never made it back.
Three months after setting out, Steelman and O’Neill made it to Miami. Their parents flew down to meet them and celebrate with them.
Steelman said there is a lot in the book that he talks about, including the weather, unpredictable waters, their endurance and friendship, and the many instances of kindness from strangers they encountered along the way. As he writes in the blurb of the book where it is available for sale on Amazon.com, the book “is a nostalgic, heartfelt true adventure memoir for readers who love stories of the open water, unforgettable friendships, 1970s Americana and the quiet ways God shows up in the middle of the journey.”
– STORY by DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
PHOTOS courtesy of Dan Steelman