Looking Backward

Chiropractor Brian Brennan has a history of helping our armed forces. He’s a veteran himself. But when he dipped his Heritage 18 rowing skiff into the Gulf of Mexico in Pensacola on Easter Sunday (March 31), he knew he was embarking on a journey that he describes as “nearly unattainable.”

“If you're gonna make a goal that everybody knows you can make,” Brennan reasons, "it's really not a goal. If you train to do a marathon, you’re 99 percent sure you’re going to finish the marathon. But I’m doing something that no one has done, rowing from Pensacola all the way down to Key West, which is the whole west coast of Florida and Emerald Coast. No one has done that. I've checked it out.”

And if rowing 900 miles from Pensacola to Key West in a rowing skiff isn’t challenging enough, imagine doing it backwards.

“You've got to realize I’ve done 650 miles backwards,” Brennan during a short layover on Marco Island. "I'm going behind me, so I'm looking towards where I've been. I have a chart plotter in front of me, which shows me where I'm heading. Everything I'm looking at is opposite. If I'm going to go left, the chart is right. I've got to calculate that in my mind. If I want to go left, it's really right. Right is left. And when I'm rowing, the seat is sliding back and forth. I've got two mirrors. I've got the chart plotter showing me my speed, my heading, my direction, all the islands and the coast around me. Then I'm playing music. I'm listening for other boats coming and manatees and dolphins coming along. A little navigational marker will come up behind me. So, I've got like nine different things going on and I'm looking at this world backwards. I never see anything in front of me. I'm looking backwards. I've rowed the whole coast of Florida backwards. And when I get close to shore, I have to turn and twist and row and twist again and then worry about waves breaking and waves coming into my boat.”

Then Brennan thinks about the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) who are the reason why he’s taken on this amazing journey. His goal is to raise $10,000 to help them.

“You know, the guys who are in action, they've got so many things going on. They have to be totally alert in their minds. Situational awareness. IED (improvised explosive device) ambushes. They've got all this stuff going on. But you learn to relax and just think about it. And I'm only doing like four miles an hour. What am I gonna hit? I just learn to adjust. There’s danger and a need for awareness out there, but I've learned to adjust and adapt and overcome all the obstacles.”

Like the time when he encountered a Mako shark—the fastest shark in the world with an average speed of 45 mph. They're ranked among the most dangerous and aggressive sharks.

“My oars stick out,” Brennan said, “and the blade at the end of the oar is yellow with a reflector on it, so maybe boats can see it. I was up in Horseshoe Beach, near the Big Bend.”

Big Bend is located at the northern end of Apalachee Bay, along the broad arc of land where the predominantly east-west coastline of the Florida Panhandle connects to the predominantly north-south geography of the Florida Peninsula. 

“I'm rowing the boat,” Brennan said, “and as the oar comes out of the water, a Mako shark jumps out of the water and tries to bite the blade, thinking it's a fish. He misses it, barely grabs it, and he rolls over on his back and tries to bite the back of the boat. When he rolls over on his back, I saw his white belly. He was about six feet long. When he bit the back of the boat, he couldn't get his teeth around it. He flipped his tail up and hit the oar again and almost broke it. It sprained my arm. Then he swam off. It happened in about two seconds, like splash, splash, splash. I didn't have time to crap my pants or anything before I knew it was over. He was gone. I sat there, recovered, drank some water, and I said, ‘All right, I need to get out of here.” 

The dimensions of his Heritage 18 are modest. It's just wide enough to safely stand up in. Billed as the best-selling rowing skiff in the world, the Heritage 18 is considered state-of-the-art. Brennan has bonded with his boat. It’s his only companion on his grueling adventure.

"I got it six months before the trip,” he said, "and I trained in it. It’s 17’ 6" long, three feet wide when it's in the water. When it's empty, it weighs like 150 pounds. The oars are eight feet long, but each oar weighs about as much as a glass of beer. They’re carbon fiber and they're strong. It's designed to hold 450 pounds. I have a dry box which looks like a cooler, with a lithium battery in it and other things that I can't afford to get wet—and a chart plotter, which is basically a little TV screen. I have parachute bags - one has a tent, sleeping bag, and my stove in it. One has dry food and coffee, and clothes. I use those little Publix shopping bags for clothes. That's basically it.”

Brennan bought the boat used from a dealer in Gainesville. 

"It cost me eight grand,” he said. “Brand new they're like $12,000-$13,000. But the guy who designed and builds and sells the boat, Little River Marine, is happy that I am doing this because now it's a testimonial of his boat.”

Brennan reached out to the boat’s designer after he broke an oarlock after a grueling stretch of paddling.

“Boom,” Brennan said, “he sent me a new oarlock. And he said, ‘When you come back, please stop by so we can do a short little video with you saying I just rowed 900 miles in this. A testimonial or whatever you want to call it, saying this boat is great. They call it unsinkable. Meaning if I took water over the sides and it filled up, it would sink down to the rim, like a bathtub. But it wouldn't sink any further unless there's more than 400 pounds in it. So, if I was in rough seas and water just flooded it, the boat actually wouldn't sink because it's fiberglass and has these air pockets in it.”

But Brennan doesn’t worry about capsizing.

“I've got life vests,” he said. "I'm not worried about dying. I've been a long-distance swimmer my whole life. That’s my thing. I would just swim to shore."

He said the boat is remarkably stable.

"Very stable,” he said. “If I didn't think it was stable, I would not in my mind think that I could finish the rest of the trip to Key West.

The boat proved its stability when Brennan had an encounter with a manatee.

"I ran over manatees who were sleeping in shallow water,” he said. "I ran over this one manatee. I was trying to go in shallow water close to the leeward side to avoid the wind. I really woke him up because he erupted. He picked my boat up about six inches. And the water around me in an eight-foot circle just erupted. Then he swam off and I could see his tail. It was going up and down as opposed to sideways. They weigh about 1,000 pounds. He picked my boat up and swam off. It freaked me out. Another time, two tarpon that were probably eight feet long jumped out of the water about five feet from my boat. They came out of the water and splashed and just scared the heck out of me.”

But not all of Brennan’s adventures occur on the water. After rowing each day, he trudges ashore, his boat in tow.

"I try and row like four or five hours a day,” Brennan said. "Which is 15 miles. That’s like perfect for me. But some days, I get stuck, and I have to do 22 miles a day and just pull up to a boat ramp and just pull in and pull my boat on the shore and pitch a tent and get attacked by rats and raccoons all night long. One place, I got chased out by bears. Up in the Florida State campgrounds up there above Apalachicola a security guard came in and said, ‘We've got bears coming through here early in the morning, so don't have any food out.' He gives me an air horn. He says, 'If a bear comes up here, blast this air horn, that should scare him away.' I was like, ‘Well, I'm ready to swim. Unless this bear's Michael Phelps, he ain't gonna catch me. So, I didn't get much sleep that night. I heard stuff in the woods because I'm up all night. I heard every little creak. I left before sunrise." 

More about the rats and raccoons.

"I was up in the Big Bend,” he said, "I had to crawl through just to find a boat ramp, pull up and put my tent up. Then I learned a lesson. You never put a tent up close to a trash can because the rats will come out. And these marsh rats are as big as cats. I still had that air horn. That would scare them away for about 20 minutes, and they'd come right back. Raccoons, on the other hand, they don't care. They come out. You blast the horn, and they look at you like, 'You talking to me?’ And they just keep on throwing their trash out. But I pulled up and slept on park benches. I pulled up to the state parks and just pulled up onto the beach. And they had like little pavilions. Cops would come by and say, ‘You know, you can’t sleep here. You can't stay here tonight.' But I’d tell them the whole song and dance about what I'm doing. They’d be like, ‘Okay, well, I'm not going to tell you that you can stay, but I'm going to leave and I patrol this place, so no one's gonna bother you.' Most of those cops are veterans themselves. Everybody's been on my side. I pull up and I'm just exhausted. I would see like a tiki bar with a beach, with a volleyball court and all that. And I just pull up and drag my boat on the shore around 4 or 5 in the afternoon, walk up to the manager and tell him what I'm doing. They'd be like, ‘Yeah, okay, the restaurant closes at nine, but we're open till midnight. I can't tell you that you can stay here. But if you put your tent up when everybody leaves and you're gone before we open at 11, nobody will know. So do what you want to do.”

Brennan often ends up at a local watering hole at the end of his day of paddling. Sometimes, he has to settle into a more remote location. Once, he had to flag down a shrimp boat.

"I've been at other restaurants that say,  ‘Yeah, you can sleep next door in that empty lot.' Other times I just pull up to lone beaches and pull my boat up and put my tent up. And I look on the beach and there's tracks of raccoons, deer, cougars, bears. Once, I got poison ivy on my feet. Oh man, that lasted for days. One day, I couldn't find a place and I pulled up next to this 60' shrimp boat. I told them my whole story. They're like, ‘Yeah, tie up next to me.' We went up to the little tiki bar there, and there's a couple veteran ladies who said I could stay at their place. Amazingly, everywhere I go, everybody has a veteran story. Only like two percent of the population are veterans. But back in the 1940s it was like 11 percent.”

“People will say, ‘Well, I'm not a veteran, but my dad was, my uncle was, my brother was, my best friend was' and all that. So, I got all these veteran stories and some of them are heartbreaking. It just breaks your heart to hear all these stories, but it gives me the motivation to carry on, like I’m actually doing something. I had one guy who said, ‘You know, I was ready to put a gun in my mouth, but the DAV (Disabled American Veterans) guy showed up and helped me get the help and everything for my lost leg.'”

Brennan said he gets donations almost everywhere he stops.

"I'm here tonight, and I met good people, and they're donating $20. That's all I want. But it's not the $20. It's the awareness that people know that there are veterans out there that are getting less attention than other people. People are getting more attention than people who swore to defend our country. Veterans are living on the streets, people who have Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts are living under bridges. Living in their cars.

"I was a chiropractic sports physician since 1985. I joined the Navy and was in submarines for a while, then in the United States Marine Corps because I was a corpsman. And then I went to chiropractic school and had a practice in Pensacola for 15-20 years. Then I got back with the military and I worked with the Air Force at Lackland Air Force Base. Then I got sent out to Pearl Harbor and I spent ten years working with everybody out there. I got to work with a lot of Seals and Marines, Air Force, Navy, everything. And that's where I got the passion to really realize that a lot of these guys who get out of the Navy are having physical and mental issues. They’re just thrown out after 15 years because they have a blown-out knee or whatever. They’re thrown out and they get the pat on the back. Thank you for your service. They wanted to be a Navy Seal or a special operator their whole life. Now they're out there and their marriage is gone because they've been gone 80 percent of the time and they have one leg or something, or they have PTSD and they're having nightmares. So, they're out in the cold. And that's why we have this crazy suicide rate. So that's my motivation for taking this goal on." 

Brennan’s more than 75 days into his journey for DAV. Quitting is not an option. It’s not even a consideration.

"The Seals have this theory that ‘no matter how bad we feel or how tired we get, we’re actually nowhere near the limit of what we can achieve.’ You've gotta keep the why going. Why am I doing this? The why has always kept me motivated. Sometimes, it seems like no one cares about what I'm doing. But then I go to places like this, and boom. Now I'm motivated again and disciplined again to do it. The Seals have this 40-60 thing, 40 means when your body is done, your hands are blistered, you've got cramps in your body. That's your mind telling you 'I'm done.' But actually, you have 60 percent more. There's plenty of times that I feel like I’m done. But it's not like I'm on the highway and I can pull over. There's no way to rescue me. I've gotta keep going. It's not like I can pull over and get on the payphone and say, 'Pick me up.' No, it’s just me. I'm out there all alone. Solitude. I'm there all by myself six, eight hours a day. No one there to rescue me. No one who I can say to, 'Come get me, I'm done.' No, I'm dependent on myself.

"In my mind I know I can do it,” he said. "I'm not going to quit. I have that Marine mentality, Navy mentality. We have more Medal of Honor winners than anybody. I'm not going to quit. My hands are jacked. My leg is jacked. My shoulder is jacked. You know, I might get eaten by an alligator next week, but I'm not going to stop. The name of my boat is Daily Ordeal. And that's what I'm trying to relate to veterans. Every day, everybody is going through a daily ordeal. But you've got to deal with the daily ordeal. Don't worry about next week or tomorrow. Just get through today and you'll get through it.”

Brennan’s still got a long row to hoe to get to Key West.

 "I'm gonna land at a Coast Guard station,” he said, "and the Coast Guard commanding officer is going to be there like he actually did something. So, he can be a photo op. They let me come there. It's fine. I'm all happy. I thought I'd be there by my birthday when I turned 67 on June 7. Now, I'm hoping to be there by July 4, which is probably a bad weekend to be down there. But, you know, I've been doing this for 75 days. Physically my butt hurts, and it makes my leg numb. My back feels like there's a knife in it sometimes. But I'm no worse for it. I'm probably better for it. I lost a lot of weight. Not that this was a weight loss program. I'm gonna come back looking like Tom Hanks in Cast Away. I'm not gonna come back like a weightlifter. Maybe a heck of a lot skinnier. Weaker, but with more endurance."