Alumni, Arches

Farewell to a Good Boat

With bagpipes, beer, and wrenches, a well-traveled craft meets its end.

The James Robert Hanssen, the world-record-setting 29-foot rowboat that crossed the Atlantic twice (almost), ended its storied life at a boatyard in Port Townsend, Wash., on June 5, 2023. The cause was structural fatigue and homelessness. She was 17.

Walking away after the memorial celebration, a woman among the hundred-or-so present was overheard saying: “When I came this morning I said to myself, I am not going to cry at a boat funeral. I am not going to cry at a boat funeral. But I did!” Other people wept, too.

The JR Hanssen was built and outfitted in 2005–06, after Jordan Hanssen ’04, one of the Loggers who helped Puget Sound clinch four consecutive Northwest Conference rowing championships, saw a poster in Seattle announcing a rowing race from New York to the U.K. Even in the rowing community, pulling oars across an ocean is on the outer limits of extreme, but Hanssen managed to recruit fellow Puget Sound rowing team members Brad Vickers ’05; Greg Spooner ’01, DPT’10; and Dylan LeValley ’05. Together they formed OAR (Ocean Adventure Racing) Northwest, and, as the exhausting list of requirements to prepare for the race grew, so did their supporters and advisers. There were experts on ocean science, navigation, and communications systems; a meteorologist; a team physician; media consultants; photographers; legions of family and friends. And the people at Emerald Harbor Marine in Seattle, the owner of which told the men, “I don’t want to help you, but if I don’t, you’re going to f---ing die.”

The crew of the James Robert Hanssen pull oars as the boat crests a wave on the Atlantic Ocean between New York to England in 2006.

Hanssen and his crewmates on the Atlantic during the 2006 New York-to-England race—3,200 nautical miles. Photo by Erinn Hale.

The crew named the boat for Hanssen’s father, who had died of a massive asthma attack when Jordan was 3 years old. Half of the money raised for the adventure was donated to the American Lung Association. On June 10, 2006, the vessel left Liberty Landing Marina in New York, headed for England. It was a crossing of interminable two-hour shifts of rowing-sleeping, rowing-sleeping, and of settling into bedding that was always cold and wet, and of pelting, stinging, skin-piercing rain squalls, and of wind that made sounds that none among the crew imagined wind could make, and of the four-man crew waiting out storms stacked like soggy cordwood in a sealed compartment the size of a couple of bathtubs. But, too, of heartbreaking sunsets, stampeding dolphins, and swirling galaxies of bioluminescent plankton as oars swept through the water, and nights when the ocean was dark and flat as glass, and when the sky reflected upon water gave the sensation of gliding along, not beneath the stars, but among them.

Seventy-one days and 3,200 nautical miles later, the men arrived in Falmouth. The JR Hanssen had won the first international ocean-rowing race from New York to England and become the first boat to row from the mainland U.S. to mainland U.K. without assistance.

In 2013 the JRH embarked on another Atlantic crossing, this time from Dakar, Senegal, to Miami, with a new crew—Hanssen, Patrick Fleming ’05, Olympic gold medalist Adam Kreek, filmmaker Markus Pukonen, and Spooner as shore commander—on a scientific and educational mission in partnership with the Canadian Wildlife Federation. Alas, after 73 days, when the rowers were within an easy 800 miles of the U.S. coast, a pair of freak waves swept over the JRH’s stern at the most vulnerable time possible—during a shift change when the sleeping compartment hatch was open—swamping and capsizing the boat.

“Sea survival training and safety equipment kept our drama from turning into tragedy,” Hanssen says. They were rescued in 12 hours but left the rowboat behind, drifting in the Bermuda Triangle (of course!), 400 miles north of Puerto Rico. Ten days later, with support from the CWF, the boat was located and retrieved, preserving tens of thousands of dollars of scientific equipment and raw scientific data and documentary film.

The crew of the James Robert Hanssen rows off the coast of Senegal in 2013, shortly after departing Dakar for Miami..

Jordan Hanssen ’04, Patrick Fleming ’05, and Adam Kreek (a Canadian Olympic gold medalist) were part of the crew for the Dakar-to-Miami adventure. The boat capsized 850 miles short of Miami; Dateline later featured the experience in an episode called “Capsized.” Photo by Erinn Hale.

After that, the JRH entered a cushy retirement, under cover in the Foss Seaport Waterway Museum in Tacoma. But it couldn’t last. It’s a small boat but a large artifact, and the bulging museum could no longer justify taking up the floor space to display her. She was moved outside and sat, slowly deteriorating, in the Northwest weather. By early 2023, it was time to decide what might be next.

A happy possibility might have been donating the JRH to another adventurer. But she’d been upside down in saltwater for more than a week, had had a few big knocks against a tugboat during the rescue, and was an aged-out design. That option didn’t seem responsible. Other museums were contacted, but they too had display-space issues. Reluctantly, then, the guys concluded it was time to decommission: “In the most fun and sensible way we could,” Hanssen says.

A fiery farewell at sea, Viking-funeral style, might have seemed appropriate, but the JRH is a fiberglass boat. Burning her would be toxic—philosophically the complete opposite of the work for which the boat had been a platform. Sinking her also was out of the question, for similar environmental reasons. The most ethical way to destroy her was to become a part of the Vessel Turn-In Program of Washington state’s Department of Natural Resources, which takes boats that have outlived their purpose and recycles them. The James Robert Hanssen would be the second boat to participate in this program.

But she needed one last voyage, and that voyage would need a purpose. After contemplation, “the best of a bunch of bad ideas,” says Hanssen, was a beer run for a party. But not just any party: It was the Ruckus, which celebrates the end of the human-powered Seventy48 race from Tacoma to Port Townsend, and the start of the Race to Alaska, a grueling 750-mile race for human-powered boats along the Inside Passage from Port Townsend to Ketchikan, Alaska. Organizers call the R2AK the hardest kind of simplicity, which is, of course, what the life of the JRH had been about.

So, this past May 30, old and new crew began a three-and-a-half-day row from Tacoma to Port Townsend, with stops in Southworth, Kingston, and Port Hadlock, carrying two kegs of Western Red Brewing beer kept iced day and night. Upon arrival in Port Townsend, the crew served beer out of the boat on the day of the Ruckus.

In June 2023, bagpipers played as the James Robert Hanssen rowed its last mile to the Port Townsend boatyard, where volunteers dismantled it. Photo by Alex Crook.

In June 2023, bagpipers played as the James Robert Hanssen rowed its last mile to the Port Townsend boatyard, where volunteers dismantled it. Photo by Alex Crook.

At 5 a.m. on Monday, June 5, the day after the party, Hanssen started the Race to Alaska with a blast from a 110-pound cannon. By 8:30 a.m. it was a perfect Northwest day. Port Townsend Bay was calm and the cloudless sky an impossible shade of blue that one finds only near the Pacific. The JRH rowed her last mile from the Northwest Maritime Center dock down to the boatyard. A flotilla of skiffs and kayaks followed, while bagpipers on a motorboat led the maritime march. At its final destination, the boat was hauled out of the water and onto its trailer. A swarm of volunteers went to work removing salvageable parts. Speeches and singing followed. The crew broke a paddle, hand-carved by Hanssen, over the JRH’s bow. And then all hands pitched in pushing the boat to the place where it would be broken apart, the pieces to be ground up and recycled. The crew led the procession, with oars raised like swords and Conch shells trumpeting. As it passed through the boatyard, accompanied by the flute and fiddle of an Irish band, workers stopped to watch the curious sight. A couple of men removed their hats as it passed. Finally, Hanssen wetted the hull one last time with water that had been collected from the Atlantic. Call it a reverse christening.

Over the course of 17 years the James Robert Hanssen made three epic voyages, totaling about 200 days. Hanssen and Spooner estimate that its oars dipped into the water 7 million times, give or take a couple hundred thousand. Perhaps 200 people were involved with her missions; more than 1,000 if you count the people who helped fund the adventures. The boat is in pieces now, its shape and capacity no longer defined by her slender fiberglass hull. But as Hanssen observed: She’s big enough now to carry everyone.

One Last Ride

The James Robert Hanssen, the brainchild of several Loggers, was a world-record-setting 29-foot rowboat that crossed the Atlantic and earned a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. It ended its storied life at a boatyard in Port Townsend, Wash., on June 5, 2023. Here’s a gallery of images of the craft, its crew, and its funeral in June.

The James Robert Hanssen rows in front of a large cargo ship on its maiden voyage in New York Harbor. — In 2006, Jordan Hanssen ’04 and crewmates Brad Vickers ’05; Greg Spooner ’01, DPT’10; and Dylan LeValley ’05 raced from New York harbor (shown here) to England, winning the race and setting a Guinness World Record. Photo by Erinn Hale.

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