Long boat trip offers a chance to reflect
When Mel Root agreed to accompany a friend to Florida, it was just in passing.
It would turn out to be the trip of a lifetime.
Root, a local boating enthusiast, was talking with a longtime friend in Jan who was planning on taking his boat off the coast of Florida.
"I jokingly said 'When you get ready to go I'll help you trailer the boat to Florida, I've got nothing better to do,' " he said.
Root dismissed the idea, and time passed.
Then on March 5, he was hit with some serious news.
"I was taken into the emergency room and they told me I had cancer. Boing," he said.
Root was told he would have to undergo chemotherapy, and he agreed.
Three days later, his friend called saying the trip was still on and to get his passport ready.
"I said 'Why do I need a passport for Florida?' He told me the second stop was in the Bahamas. That was at 1 p.m. By 4 p.m., I had my passport renewal in the mail," he said.
Root was born in Tulsa, graduated from Hale High School and received his journalism degree from Oklahoma State University.
He worked as a staff photographer with the Tulsa World for 23 years before
opening his own business.
He was first introduced to the clear blue water of the Florida Keys as a child.
"My grandmother corrupted me. Before I learned to swim she put a life jacket on me and a snorkel and tied me to a rope and dragged me around the Florida Keys," he said. "There's something about the world underwater that attracted me like a magnet."
As an adult, he got his diver's certificate and in 1980 purchased his first boat, a 21-foot sailboat.
He dragged that boat around to area lakes for a few years before deciding to keep it at Lake Tenkiller, the clearest lake he could find.
"I've sailed the first day of the year, the last day of the year and almost every day in between. The only month I don't sail is November," he said.
As the years went by his love for boating continued and he upgraded to a bigger boat, and then a bigger one, finally settling on a 29-foot sailboat named Margaritaville that he keeps at Lake Eufaula.
"It's one of the few lakes where you can go to two different areas and look at a section of water 8 miles by 4 miles. That's a pretty good surface area," he said.
Being confronted with the opportunity to return to those blue waters off the coast of Florida, Root knew he had to find a way to make it happen.
After one round of chemotherapy, he was able to work with his doctor to allow for a break in the treatment.
The next thing he knew, he and his friend were on Interstate 35 in a diesel truck pulling a 26-foot Chris-Craft cruiser named Island Time bound for Fort Lauderdale.
Once there, they hadn't had the boat on water for two hours before Root was awestruck.
"At 11:15 a.m. the most awesome experience occurred. You could look to the north, the east and the south and there was nothing but water. That experience, being a speck in the middle of nothing, you get the same feeling everyone who has come to sea in a boat has felt," he said.
Root spent 10 days on the water traveling mostly to uninhabited areas save for a couple of port stops to restock the supplies. They covered about 200 nautical miles.
"You can look down 100 feet in the water and see fish at the bottom. It's mind-boggling that water can be that clear, especially coming from red-dirt country," he said.
The trip ended when Root came down with food poisoning and was flown back to the States to see his doctor, he said, adding that the rush home was probably an overreaction.
"The last couple of days, nothing stayed down. That's what I get for eating a cheeseburger in paradise," he said.
News source : www.tulsaworld.com