Jordan Hanssen – Rowing and Sailing Adventurer-Storyteller
Jordan Hanssen is an author and adventurer who our publisher met at a book signing and our editor befriended at a local boater’s hangout, The Sloop tavern in Ballard. Not only is he a 4Friend but he really is a friend as we all share a passion for the sea, boats, and adventure.
After falling in love with rowing after racing crew at university, Hanssen decided that there were other waters that needed exploring. With three of his crew mates he rowed a 29-foot boat from New York to England in a race. They won the race and earned a Guinness World Record. The saga is told in his book Rowing into the Son published by Mountaineers Books in 2012.
This ignited a love of adventure that evolved into an adventure education nonprofit called OAR Northwest that would take him rowing around the Olympic Peninsula and Vancouver Island, across another ocean (that ended up with a capsize and recovery of the boat). He also made several trips rowing nearly the entire length of the Mississippi River. Research and outreach became a part of these adventures with data collected for universities, papers published, and hundreds of presentations to students.
During our late pandemic when the world was starved for connection and intimacy, Jordan filmed 200 artists in ten states, four countries, and two oceans in his rowboat and called it tinyboatsession. At the time of this writing, he continues these intimate, soulful musical interludes.
In the last few years he’s taken to sail with trips across the Pacific, sailing precious cargo on a brigantine moving rum around the North Atlantic, and aboard a bark around Cape Horn covering over 20,000 miles. When he’s not at sea, he’s in the PNW, often rowboat exploring, crabbing, fishing, and sharing his love for it with others. In addition to writing shorter articles and his book, Jordan is currently working on a documentary about those trips.
You can find his work at www.jordanhanssen.com and www.tinyboatsession.com. We also plan to feature some of Jordan’s writing on Best4boats.
Follow Jordan on Social Media
ACR PLB that Saved Me after a Capsize
Rum Running a Brigantine in the 21st Century
Rowing into the Son by Jordan Hanssen
