• By CHANTE DIONNE WARREN
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Dec 2, 2009 - Page: 1B

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Brett Rogers quit his full-time office job two years ago and left the comforts of home in Lowville, Canada, to spend the past 100 days paddling down the Mississippi River in a wooden boat powered by oar and sail.

Rogers, 27, and his Old Man River crew of four visited the Louisiana Art and Science Museum, where they shared their river stories on stage Tuesday with Baton Rouge nature photographer C.C. Lockwood, who sailed the river in 1997 and wrote a book about it.

Rogers contacted Lockwood three years ago for advice on planning his river journey which has taken his crew through 2,100 miles of Mississippi River waters since they paddled into Baton Rouge on Sunday, he said.

“We rowed 10 hours a day and you have to have the mental capacity to want to do it,” Rogers said. “You can’t do something like that (sailing the river) and it not change your life.”

He said several of his Canadian and Australian crew members are recent college graduates who saved their own money and accepted donations to build the 32-foot York boat called “Annie.”

The team’s mission ahead could prove to be the most treacherous, Rogers said. They will leave Baton Rouge Thursday and sail 230 miles to reach the Gulf of Mexico where they will end their tour in about 10 days, he said.

“I’m anxious to complete it. From here to New Orleans is one of the busiest runways. The water is not safe to swim in and then there is the chance of severe weather,” Rogers said. “This is definitely one of the most dangerous areas.”

Rogers and his crew are part of the Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper group, based in Baton Rouge. The group is an affiliate of the international Waterkeeper Alliance, whose members are advocates for specific world waterways.

“It’s not the journey down the river but meeting the people,” Rogers said. “What better way to learn America than to travel down its middle.”

Rogers, who has also traveled along the Yukon and Mackenzie rivers, said his crew began their Mississippi River journey on Aug. 22, in Bemidji, Minn.

They spent about five to six weeks navigating the waters in Minnesota, he said.

“I didn’t know the water could be so slow,” Rogers said. In some cases, he said, the boat would travel as little as one mile an hour or slower.

The crew has paddled its way through narrow and deep parts of the river, watched sunsets and sunrises and observed the river’s wildlife residents, including nutria, deer, beavers, pelican and more, Rogers said.