If the weather outside wasn’t brisk and the days turned to rainy, dreary and unforgivingly uncomfortable, there would probably be two determined people with a combined age of 159 years paddling around Whidbey, planning their next big adventure.

In November, part-time Freeland residents Bill and Mary Black completed the final leg of a water journey that took them around Whidbey’s shoreline inside a 17-foot touring canoe. They were guided by a map printed on a thin white piece of paper, a few guide books and study notes on tides, winds and currents.

“It was a silent trip around the island,” Bill Black said.

Between paddles, the couple studied the coastline — its geographical features and intriguing places they simply hadn’t known existed.

At times, they were far away from everything and yet so close at the same time.

“If simply driving up the island all the time, people would never see parts of the island that we saw,” Mary Black said.

They witnessed abundant wildlife and sea creatures. They peeked down through eel grass to see crabs scurrying on the ocean floor and schools of fish darting about. They steered around rocks poking just through the surface and wondered what larger rock might have spawned them. They observed birdlife and remember a large flock of great blue herons around a stretch in the Deception Pass area. They noted private and public ramps and docks — they saw fantastic access and ones that have long seen their day. They remember the “swish” and “swoosh” sounds as they slid over kelp beds.

“The beauty of the shoreline was amazing and we found a lot of it undisturbed,” Bill Black said. “It was surprising to see how much of it wasn’t developed or inhabited.”

They began paddling around Whidbey in mid-June — on their own terms.

“We paddled when the weather was good and when the current and waves were behind us,” Black said.

The Blacks paddled their journey in 18 different segments, usually in 3- to 4-hour stretches — though some paddles were longer and some shorter. The couple made sure the trips could easily be managed in a day and planned ahead before even getting near the water.

When the Blacks’ neighbor, Janet Hall, found out about the couple’s intent, she introduced the couple to the handbook “Getting to the Water’s Edge: Accessing Public Beaches on Whidbey and Camano Islands.” The book was published by the Washington State University Beach Watchers of Island County and Rotary Club of South Whidbey in 1994. The Blacks said the book proved invaluable with its content of public access locations, details of terrain, information about marine life in the areas and other essential study materials for anyone getting ready to hit the waters off Whidbey.

Hall, a WSU employee and a WSU Beach Watchers of Island County, said with a possible reprint in the future, the Beach Watchers need donors and input for the next round.

It will be the paddle trips of people like the Blacks that will help contribute to an updated version of “Getting to the Water’s Edge” that WSU Island County Beach Watchers look to reprint.

“They found public access that wasn’t listed and learned things about ones that were listed that we didn’t know,” Hall said.

The Blacks spent almost as much time on the water as they did planning the logistics of canoe entry and exit from water and how to get one car at the drop-off site and the other on location to take them home.

In doing so, they not only learned about the water’s edge of Whidbey, but land and roads they’d never heard of before.

“This was a land voyage as much as it was a sea voyage,” Mary Black said. “Being in the canoe was nothing but enjoyable but the logistics were sometimes less agreeable.”

They kept close to the shoreline for safety and for easy viewing of land and marine wildlife.

“You have to have knowledge of the winds and currents if you want to be out there and be safe,” Bill Black said.

And although that map of Whidbey is now fully outlined in highlighter orange, the trip wasn’t one continuous loop. The segments sometimes had no rhyme or reason other than convenience of location or that a stretch had the best tides and currents of the day.

Canoeing around Whidbey Island is just another tally mark on the list of life for a couple that has shared a lifetime of adventure.

“We go around in circles already,” Mary Black said.

He’s 81. She’s 78. They both don’t act a day over 29, a fact their children can confirm.

“If you knew our parents, it wouldn’t surprise you,” said son Will Black, who is a Maxwelton resident. “We just went ‘here we go again’ because they are people who can’t sit still for a second.”

Bill Black has sailed since he was a teenager; Mary inherited the hobby when the couple married in 1948. They spent many a year racing a 24-foot sloop. Between 1975 and 1979, the Blacks circumnavigated the globe via the Southern Hemisphere in a 40-foot cutter rig sailboat. In 1990, they sailed a loop of the North Pacific departing from Seattle, heading down to Micronesia, west to Japan, and north to the Aleutian chain before sailing back to Washington. They’ve raced in sailboat races to Hawaii and taken adventure voyages around Vancouver Island.

The last week of January, they’ll head to Sun Valley, Utah, for Ancient Skier’s Week.

“They are proof that people should not consider age a limitation for anything they do,” Hall said.

“They need to move and do,” said another Black son, Hunter. “Sailboats have gotten too big for them, but canoes allow them to still have an adventure but at a different pace.”

Paddling a canoe has become a fountain of youth for the Blacks. They’ve paddled canoe treks along the Green River in Utah, the St. John’s River in Maine and the Boundary Waters of Maine.

Bill Black said he feels fewer creaks in his body since he’s been paddling around in a canoe all day.

The couple inherited their love for paddling canoes from son Hunter, who’s been canoeing for 30 years. He is currently a canoe guide working near his home in Nevada City, Calif.

According to Hunter Black, canoes are beautiful no matter how you look at them — upside down, from the side, or as they are slicing through the water.

“Canoeing is probably one of the best ways to traverse the natural environment and carry hundreds of pounds of gear at the stroke of a paddle,” he said. “Canoeing is something anyone can do and there’s a slight difficulty so there is always something to improve on and learn.”

Despite being young at heart and able to paddle circles around people one quarter their age, the Blacks said some people were surprised to see the duo out on the water in their canoe.

“People would double-take when they realized it was us out there,” Mary Black said. “One time I was getting out of the boat and fell over a little while stretching and a young man was there to catch me. It was kind of amusing that he made sure to be there.”

Another time the Blacks got out of the boat to stretch their legs by walking up to their car before unloading their gear and they realized a couple of “polite young men” were carrying it up behind them.

“We thought it’d be fun to see the edge of the island — we weren’t trying to do any kind of feat or anything,” Bill Black explained.

Although they’d never speak to it themselves, Hall said the canoe trip the Blacks took is another amazing feat completed by an amazing couple.

“They’ve always done so many activities in their lives and still made time to give back to the community,” she said.

Hall points to the Blacks’ volunteer work with the Playground in the Park, the Whidbey Camano Land Trust and the Maxwelton Salmon Adventure.

Hunter Black said he’s now curious about paddling around Whidbey himself, now that his parents paddled a path.

“Time slowed down for them,” he said. “They’ve traveled around the world and made it through typhoons in the Pacific, but they were just as excited over these stories of how well they got to know the island.”