MATTAWAN —

A lifelong educator and outdoorsman, Dave Diget knows the impor­tance of setting goals and de­veloping plans to reach them.

“If you haven’t set goals, you need to,” he wrote in a recent email to swimmers and paddlers who are, or have been, under his tutelage. “If you hope to have a suc­cessful season, swim career, academic year, college success, lifetime happiness, you need short- and long-range plans. ... Figure out the details, reeval­uate and modify. By all means continue to reach a successful completion of the task.

“Whether it is one season, one school year or one lifetime, do it.”

Diget, 72, provided a per­sonal example of that this year when he spent five months preparing for the rigorous Tip of the Mitt Adventure. It’s a 300-mile voyage from Oscoda to Manistee in which participants are propelled only by human power and wind.

Five entrants worked in teams to either sail or canoe up Lake Huron, around the Straits of Mackinac and down Lake Michigan. Another five individually plied the waters of the Au Sa­ble and Manistee rivers either marathon-style — with planned assistance along the way — or expedition-style — with no planned assistance.

Diget, a retired Western Michigan University swimming coach and outdoor education instructor who teaches ca­noeing and kayaking to young people at Wolf Lake near his home, chose the latter.

“I wanted to do it expedition­-style,” he said. “I’ve been inter­ested all my life in (explorers) Lewis and Clark, and I’ve read their journals.”

'A great experience'

Diget, who counted 5,379 pad­dling strokes and 11,202 rowing pulls during the course of the trip, completed the task in four days, 19 hours and 30 min­utes — ahead of the rest of the adventur­ers, which he attributes to his preparations.

Diget began preparing by modifying plans for a folding wooden canoe that he designed and built a decade ago. His new boat, a 16-footer, still folded in two and had wheels so it could be pulled, but it was built of fiberglass and Polycore instead of wood and weighed 60 pounds. He also purchased a folding bike that fit inside the canoe for water travel and pulled it for land travel.

“I was a lot faster on the por­tages (than the other adven­turers) because of the bike,” he said.

A full spray skirt made by Diget’s wife, Pat, doubled as a covering at night so Diget could sleep inside the boat in­stead of pitching a tent and still be protected from the elements that would include three rain­storms he encountered during the expedition. His meals consisted of quick fixes: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, dried fruit, nuts, jerky, oatmeal cookies, banan­as, water and orange juice so he wouldn’t have to take the time to cook.

Participants in the Tip of the Mitt Adventure departed from Oscoda on the morning of June 18. On the fifth day, June 22, Diget departed from the M-37 bridge at Mesick at 8 a.m. and paddled 70 miles, portaging twice, by evening. He decided to continue until he reached the finish, the Insta Launch Campground in Manistee.

Arriving on foot at 11:30 at night, he was greeted by a welcoming party of one — his wife.

“It was a great experience,” he said. “Somebody said, ‘Would you do it again?’ Prob­ably not.”

Dave Person can be reached at david.r.person@gmail.com or 269-345-0786.

Click through the link for more articles from Generations magazine.