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BY JENNIFER BABSON, jbabson@herald.com, The Herald, Saturday, February 10, 2001

KEY LARGO – He’s been tossed by fierce winds, battered by 15-foot swells and eyeballed by a great white shark as the creature flexed its jaws and made a meal out of a pelican.

"There were days’ when I was on my knees saying, ’Man, I want to go home.’" Admitted Mike Falconeri, who has made a pit stop in Key Largo this weekend, on the second leg of a journey to paddle the entire 4,500 miles of the United States coastline in an 18-foot-long fiberglass kayak.

The professional kayaking instructor says his "Sea America Expedition" may be the first solo kayak trip around the entire U.S. coast. "I am working on a ’top 10’ of the questions I most frequently get asked," the Connecticut native said. "One of the most popular questions is, ’Are you crazy?’ " Falconeri’s voyage, which began July 2 in’ Tahola, Wash", is scheduled to end by April –he hopes – at a dock in Eastport, Maine. The trek, in which Falconeri, 41, usually covers between 20 and 25 miles a day, has taken him through eight states and along the curves of the Mississippi Delta. After paddling from Washington State to California, a friend drove him to Corpus Christi, Texas, where he resumed his coastal tracing.

The nonprofit American Oceans Campaign, an environmental group founded by actor Ted Danson, is publicizing, though not bankrolling, Falconeri's trip.

"He’s in a position to be a powcrful voice for America’s ’oceans and coasts," said David Hall, a spokesman for the group. "He's getting a firsthand look at what’s right with them and what’s wrong with them in terms of their condition and health."

Armed with two cameras and a hockey stick to fight off snakes and other antagonists, Falconeri has been snapping pictures of oil puddles, legions of dead fish and beachheads brimming with trash along the west side of the Gulf of Mexico. "These are environmental issues that I didn’t even know the extent of until I started paddling," he said. "I found these things in the places where you don’t even find people." Falconeri has mailed the film to friends, who develop the pictures and post them on his website, www.uekayakiag.com.

Much of his energy has been focused on; contending with more practical challenges, however. "Right now I’m just concentrating on surviving the trip," Falconeri said. Armed with waterproof yellow duffel bags that hold his dehydrated food, Falconeri totes four gallons of water a day, and is mostly paying his way with a plethora of credit cards that are underwriting the $25,000 trip. .

No one is motoring or paddling behind him on the long days that often end at campsites he sets up along deserted coasts.

"You have to accept certain responsibilities when you take off on a trip like this. You can’t rely on somebody to come and get you," he said. "This is work. This is hard work"

At the campsites, he pitches a small mountaineering tent, cooks his dinner in a single pot on a portable burner and sleeps in a jacket that covers his face with netting to protect him from bugs. "I started nut at 185 pounds, was down to 155 pounds when I finished the West Coast, and now I’m trying to maintain 165 pounds," he said. One of the biggest challenges Falconeri has encountered is something most people take for granted -- keeping warm and dry. The clothes he wears while kayaking are constructed of a special fabric that can easily by wrung out and dried overnight.

It’s Falconeri’s second attempt to make the record books. He launched a similar venture in 1999, only to bow out about 18 days into thc trip after contending with bad weather and a dangerous brush with a whirlpool in the frigid waters off Washington-state. "I planned this for four years," Falconeri said Friday, munching on pizza outside the Kayak & Canoe Center at Florida Bay 0ufitters in Key Largo.

Falconeri will be appearing from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today and Sunday at the center to talk about his trip. Florida Bay Outfitters is located at mile marker 104 on the bay side.