The following article appeared in an in-house NEA publication, and also ran in various newspapers that had picked it up from NEA. Written by Jay Heavilin, it picks up the story about Heather and her crew’s Great Loop journey as the schooner neared home. Since the NEA offices were located in Cleveland, Kreigh Collins and crew would be sailing directly past NEA HQ as they neared the western end of Lake Erie on their way to Heather’s home port on Lake Macatawa. They still needed to nearly circumnavigate the lower peninsula of Michigan—nearly 500 miles through lakes St. Clair, Huron, and Michigan—but with 5,000 miles already logged, they were on the homestretch.

The final installment of this story arc includes two new additions to my collection—the two color third pages shown below. These episodes (and three dozen others) came from my new friend Dave, a vendor from New Jersey. This spring, I paid him a visit, intending to purchase the episodes, but he insisted on giving them to me. Thank you, Dave!

The black and white portions of final three episodes come from photographs I took of the originals, which are located in one of the Grand Rapids Public Library’s special collections. (If I remember correctly, they are found on the fourth floor. Highly recommended!)

Meanwhile, back in New Orleans, the situation is frantic.

And when things couldn’t get worse…

Oh, what a relief!

In the third frame of the final episode of the chapter, young Dave utters what seems to have become something of a catchphrase, “Some things are hard to explain.” I haven’t kept track of all the instances, but I recall Pedro uttering the line in a mid-1960s episode of KEVIN THE BOLD.

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For more information on the career of Kreigh Collins, visit his page on Facebook.