Texas Water Safari

Michael Brick: SEADRIFT, Tex. — The rowboat was called the Delta Dawn. It measured 24 feet long by 28 inches wide by 11 ½ inches deep. The bow was sealed with sawdust and epoxy, and the sides were assembled from two-by-fours of clear spruce. Butch Hodges set the beams in place one by one, alternating sides the way a guitarist changes strings. But first he built a table, a platform straight and true.

"Your boat's going to be as good as your table is," Hodges said.

His boat was good enough to win the 1976 Texas Water Safari, billed as the world's toughest river race. A commemorative photograph shows him shirtless and triumphant, a wild man with a can of Budweiser and a slab of barbecue, the last to paddle to victory in anything so primitive as a homemade wooden rowboat.