Seattle rower plans one last voyage — and a funeral — for beloved boat

Positively PNW

After over a decade at Tacoma’s Foss Waterway Seaport museum, Jordan Hanssen knew it was time to put his once-famed rowboat to rest. The 30-foot-long boat was falling apart from age and weather damage sustained from its latest outdoor display. Seeing it broke Hanssen’s heart.

The rowboat, named James Robert Hanssen after the Wallingford resident’s late biological father, carried Hanssen and three friends across the Atlantic Ocean in 2006. The 71-day-long trip from Liberty Island in New York City to Port Pendennis marina in Falmouth, a city on the southwestern tip of the United Kingdom, landed the group in Guinness World Records for being the first crew of four to row land-to-land from the Atlantic West to East. The trip also raised about $50,000 for the American Lung Association in memory of Hanssen’s late father, who died of severe asthma when Jordan was 3 years old.

When museum representatives notified him that they could no longer house the JRH, Hanssen said deciding what to do with the rowboat brought up many bittersweet feelings. But he knew the boat needed a proper send-off and one last voyage on the water. 

The JRH’s final mission: delivering beer to the “Ruckus Party” ahead of the Race to Alaska, during which teams will row boats using only manpower from Port Townsend to Ketchikan, Alaska. Hanssen and friends plan to row the JRH from Tacoma on May 30 to arrive in Port Townsend before the teams set sail on June 5. 

Although the JRH will not be racing, Hanssen said Port Townsend is a sentimental place because several of his original rowing crew’s training voyages began and ended there. 

“[I]t gives the boat one last mission. It’s extraneous, needless, much more complex than it needs to be, but it’s a purpose nonetheless,” Hanssen wrote in an email. 

The crew plans to make stops on the way to Port Townsend to allow people to hop on or off, ahead of the JRH arriving at its final resting place. The JRH will then be rowed to a boatyard escorted by a bagpiper, where it will be recycled.

“Part of me hates every single part of this process because it’s painful. It also seems silly because it’s an object,” Hanssen said. “But it’s also an object that’s embedded with a lot of meaning, not just by me but a lot of people for what it did and who it was named after.” 

The crew plans to leave the boat and row to a wake at a local bar while being serenaded by a brass band. 

“It started with us and so it needed to finish with us,” Hanssen said. “And now is the time.” 

Hanssen and crewmate Greg Spooner considered other options to send the JRH off, including a Viking ship funeral, in which the boat is set on fire out on the water, or another traditional boat funeral like sinking it in the lake. However, neither option was environmentally safe — or legal. 

The boat is made out of fiberglass, which is a type of plastic, and like most boats, is coated with toxic paint that could break down and harm aquatic life and humans.

“This was such a wonderful way to send the JRH on her final journey and to shine her back up again,” Spooner said. 

After the success of the first voyage across the Atlantic in 2006, Hanssen attempted another journey from the coast of Senegal in West Africa to Miami, but the crew was rescued when the JRH capsized. The boat was lost at sea for several days before it was recovered by chance. The boat sustained substantial damage to its hull during the rescue mission, rendering it unfit for future long-distance voyages. 

“The JRH is as much a crew member as any one of us along the way on the first expedition across the North Atlantic, around Vancouver and from Africa,” Spooner said. 

Hanssen still has a passion for the water and has turned his journeys into a book, “Rowing into the Son.” He also founded a nonprofit, OAR Northwest, which aims to bring people together through adventure education classes online and school visits.

“We put together this organization, and each subsequent row that we did, we got better and more people involved,” Hanssen said. “In 10 years we did five very big trips, reached a lot of students and it was a beautiful dream but you got to wake up and put in the work every day to make those dreams happen, but those dreams come to an end.”

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