The team collects itself in shared glowing admiration of her timeless features. Only then do we respond to each other's welcomes. It's always good to see Pete "The Big Unit" Mel aptly with jaw agape. Captain Martin Daly is in remarkable form.  Photographer Jeff Hornbaker, spellbound but concerned about everything, starts framing through his lens without a hitch. We load up, protect our ears and we're taxiing. St. Louis air traffic control spits out: "Oh, I see now - that yellow-blue girl." In no time pilot Bill de Silva has her over the cornfields closing in on the great river.

From up here the mothership of the Quiksilver Crossing, the Indies Trader, looks crisp and content against the Mississippi's opaque freshwater tan. Circling in several long arcs, with a closer-than-necessary look at the Traders rigging, the Albatross's contoured hull separates the water on landing, then cushions and glides us to drift. There are feelings of "Did that really happen?" Instantly, all the laws of being in a boat apply. As if old friends that hadn't seen one another in years, craft and vessel sidle up and swap endless silent stories. Looking splendid together, one night is all you get and the real mission north must be completed. Can't forget the 5'5" tow-board stashed in the old girls hold, in case we are truly blessed.

It's a black, star-filled sky on our descent…it's 41 degrees Fahrenheit on the ground in Canada, the sub-Artic. Anticipation of the new lures me somewhere else, to a sobering thought: "Ice slush." I'm stunned. What sorts of surfers endure this kind of environment? What do they eat? Can they talk? And most importantly: What do they see? For weeks I've been baffled since reading those two words amid accounts of crazed winter surfing sketched in a flurry of e-mail crossfire between locals and our main man at HQ. Not ready for bone-numbing cold (never will be) but I'm comforted for now by our late September timing. Jet-lagged, 24 hours or so behind others we are yet to join. Different place, a cloudless morning, soft wind…it feels like good surf.

Heads turn as a blue pickup truck sways into a tightly spaced lot and squeezes out a fireball. Lance Moore shakes my hand on intro, while is right eye winks a "yep, got ya on that," without a word passing his lips. Lance is our local connection who knows this place. He's happy about the day and all that is hoped for, and he leads us to his spot, which is serving up clean head-high peelers along a pebble-strewn point, one of many around, plain to see.

Once in the water, it wasn't as cold as I'd imagined. Franky has moved forward with his technique, and it's priceless to watch. Pete Mel lays giant hacks and shows fins all over the shop. Raph quietly rips the bag in style while Lance keeps me on my toes. Captain Daly, odd in rubber and excitable away from his warmer secrets, entertains a grunt from deep in his hairy gut: "It'll be great to see this coast from the air."

What is out there? Maps show scarce road access to coastal fringes, and numerous efforts by the wayward SUV's become futile against thickly wooded lowlands. All set to move is amphibious pilot Bill de Silva and his baby. His briefing assures Capt. Daly and all that the staunch Grumman can happily land across eight-foot groundswells with sufficient period. Piece of cake, it can't be bigger than two-foot here, but beware the short-period wind swell, that's the hitch. To my surprise, the Grumman crew knows, like surfers, what they are looking for in the ocean. Experience in landing a flying boat in open windswept sea doesn't come easy. Bill's eyes are good for it, I convince my inner skeptic. Inlets, islets and outer reefs jut and speckle the plotted course for exploration to start; all while the belly of the Albatross is filled to a comfortable bulge. A deflated inflatable for scouting is flopped and secured to the inside - what would we do without it? Plus there are the boards and all that go with them. Everyone is anxious to surf never-seen reefs. Lance joins in for geographic know-how. He speaks a surfers language, which the Quiksilver Crossing's epic path to date has shown us is clearly universal.

Bill arcs the seaplane on Capt. Daly's word and warns approach for landing. A short, clean right-hander passes under her wings and there's spray all the over the place. The pilot taxis her nearer the break. I come to my senses - its like a wave Capt. Daly knows well.

First into the lineup names it, an unwritten code. Lance is beside himself and is falling over half-pulled socks, and I guess I can't help myself either. Raph, Franky and Pete are in shock at events taking place. Lance is out of the hole and into the water first and I follow in his wake. I pull the water easier and take him before we are halfway. There are seals poking half their bodies out of the water at the crest of the swell, wondering what this all means.

Taking the first wave, I can't be a gloater, and for all his fireball energy I name it 'Lance's Right' immediately, without question. Odd similarities scoped up from a tiny walled line of swell-feeling shallow reef, and an A-framed bend to a quick ending. We all enjoyed head-high crystal-clear waters, and the seals didn't mind. I wondered what went down here under stronger swell events. On liftoff, Lance paid extra attention to the obvious landmarks (his right eye: "yep, got ya on that"). Just hope you get swell after a long haul getting back there without a plane.