On July 6, 2025, Clara Hudacin and I pushed off a quiet Salt Spring Island beach and took the first of over one million paddle strokes that would take us around Vancouver Island. It was a sunny, calm afternoon. Fifty-eight days later, after paddling 730 nautical miles (1,350 km), our bows scraped up onto that same beach to complete a trip that I had been dreaming of for more than four years.