Jordan Hanssen

My name is Jordan, and I’m guest blogging for Greg because he invited me to help him shake down WiTHiN around Vancouver Island. I am not given to making baseball analogies, however, I do think the best term to define how I came to meet Greg and be included in the Vancouver Island circumnavigation in these past few months is to say that I’m a pinch hitter for another guy name Greg.   For simplicities sake I will refer to this Greg by his last name, Spooner.  Spooner is a friend of mine and we, along with two other friends, Dylan LeValley and Brad Vickers, took a 29 ft rowboat in a race from New York Harbor to Falmouth, England.  Even thought we lost a slimming 135 lbs between the four of us we still managed to win and bring home a Guinness World Record by becoming the first boat to make it from mainland USA to mainland UK.

Oars Northwest team who rowed across the North Atlantic in 2006

That was back in the summer of 2006, and this accomplishment put us on Greg K’s radar.  He contacted Spooner and began picking his brain for the considerable ocean experience he had gained as part of our team.  I had heard about Greg K from Spooner a few years ago but my involvement remained limited to discussions and conjecture with Spooner about the many delicate maneuvers and systematic operations involved in keeping a human engine comfortable enough to keep working in a similar but still very different conditions than our rowboat.

I did not give it much more thought until the middle of this summer when Spooner called me up and told me Greg K had invited him to go test the then named WiTHiN out in the deep blue.  He could not go because he was finishing up his last year of Physical Therapy school and ask me if I would go in his place.   I know that most people would think that getting in a tiny boat without an engine or a sail for a few weeks would be a miserable experience, and one part of me agrees, but that part is very small.  The rest tells me that this wasn’t an offer I could not pass up.  Greg K formally invited me a few days later, no doubt assuming that one ocean rower was as good as another.  Fortunately for him I am way cooler than Spooner.

I don’t have anywhere close to the bike credentials Greg K has, but I don’t own a car and biked across Australia in 2008 so the concept of peddling for a while is not completely foreign to me.  I’m hoping I can keep up.  I got to be honest; circumnavigating Vancouver Island intimidates me, but that’s why I want to be a part of it.  I have a huge respect for the power of the ocean and it continues to draw me to it.  To work within the power of its wind, waves, eddies, currents and tides has taught and continues to teach me a natural pace and patience unavailable anywhere else.  Using my own power in a corroborative effort with the sea is empowering.  If figure that’s a good enough reason alone, but I’m also a sucker for a good adventure story and figure this is a great one to play a supporting role in.

Jordan Hanssen