In 2020, Tez Steinberg rowed roughly 2,700 miles from California to Hawaii. He spent 71 days on the water, facing bad weather and extreme isolation. Surprisingly, when he landed on Oahu, he decided he wanted to do it again. This time, he would row from Hawaii to Australia, more than twice as far as his first expedition.
In 2020, Tez Steinberg rowed roughly 2,700 miles from California to Hawaii. He spent 71 days on the water, facing bad weather and extreme isolation. Surprisingly, when he landed on Oahu, he decided he wanted to do it again. This time, he would row from Hawaii to Australia, more than twice as far as his first expedition.
Connect with Tez:
Thank you to our sponsors:
Tez Steinberg:
The thing with ocean-rowing is: No one is an ocean rower until they do it. Very few people who row an ocean previously were rowers, because if you row crew... The idea of rowing crew across an ocean sounds horrible. In a sense, the fact that I wasn't a rower and I wasn't a sailor and I'd never been to sea worked in my advantage, because a little bit of naivete sometimes can be really good when you're doing something really bold.
Shelby Stanger:
In 2020, Tez Steinberg rowed roughly 2,700 miles from California to Hawaii. The trip was brutal. He spent 71 days on the water, facing down bad weather and extreme isolation. But when he landed on Oahu, he decided he wanted to do it again. This time he would row from Hawaii to Australia, more than twice as far as his first expedition. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op MasterCard.
When Tez Steinberg was in college, he started competing in triathlons and ultramarathons. This was the start of a lifelong relationship with endurance sports. Tez struggled with depression and he found that spending hours training out in nature was good for his mental health. It was also the athletic foundation he needed to become a long-distance ocean rower, even though he had never rowed before.
Tell me how you got this wild idea to row from California to Hawaii.
Tez Steinberg:
That was 2016, when I got the idea to row across the ocean. I was living in London, getting my MBA, racing, doing ultramarathons. Life felt really great. And overnight everything changed. My dad who I love dearly, died, and he actually died of suicide. In the aftermath of that, I didn't exactly know how to process that. I was just angry and felt rejected and all the things.
A few months into that process, I watched a film about a woman who had rowed around the world. And when I saw that film, I was like, oh my gosh, I think I need to do that. Walked out of the theater and googled how long does it take to row across an ocean? Then I spent the next month reading a few books by different ocean rowers and just learning about it.
About a month later, in November of 2016, for the first time out loud, I said to someone, "I'm going to row across an ocean.". And I literally said it like that, like a whisper, because it sounded so crazy. And she was like, "What?" And I was like, "I'm going to grow across an ocean.". She's like, "Oh, cool.". I was like, okay. I've said it out loud.
Shelby Stanger:
I also read that you never really had rowed before.
Tez Steinberg:
Oh, yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
What did you do that first time to get ready, physically? Real quick, let's go physical part.
Tez Steinberg:
From a physical perspective, it's time in the gym. I was an ultra runner at this point, and so super lean. When you spend months at sea, it's a matter of attrition. You cannot consume sufficient calories to stop weight loss. So, I needed to get on that boat with extra muscle and extra fat. It's working out in a gym, doing functional strength exercises and putting on as much horsepower as I could and then some extra fat for fuel.
Shelby Stanger:
It took Tez a few years to get in shape for his first rowing journey. He worked with coaches to build functional mobility and strength while also focusing on injury prevention. Aside from his physical training, Tez did a lot of research on the equipment he would need for open ocean rowing. He decided to have a boat built specifically for his expedition.
On board, Tez had everything he would need for up to three months: solar panels to produce power, a lithium-iron battery power bank, equipment for navigation and communication, and most importantly, a desalinator which purifies ocean water so that it's drinkable. He also wanted his row to have a larger mission, so he started a non-profit called United World Challenge, which raised money for education. With a greater purpose driving his journey, Tez took off from Monterey, California on July 3rd 2020, and headed west towards Hawaii.
What was that first day like?
Tez Steinberg:
The first day was magic. I rowed out from Monterey, California at midnight. That's when a weather window opened, when the wind was low, so I could row offshore before wind would push me back. If you're a solo rower like me, you need to look for a really good window to sneak out far enough where you can rest and be safe. I leave at midnight.
When the sun comes up the next day, there's humpback whales absolutely everywhere, feeding and leaping out of the water all day long. And at the end of the day, mom and calf came and swam around my boat 10 feet away. It's foggy and I can't see land, and it's just me and these whales. It was absolutely magic. But at the end of the day, I was like, okay, I've seen what the ocean can show me, but I'm going to have to pay a price for this. I had that feeling.
Two days later, wind and weather completely changed. That lovely, little weather window that gave me a red carpet to get far enough out to sea was gone. A hurricane about 1,000 miles away whipped up. And I, being such a novice and so new to this boat in the ocean, it was more than I could handle and I couldn't control the boat. So, I had to deploy a para-anchor, which is an underwater parachute on about 200 feet of line that stabilizes the boat, keeps it from capsizing.
I put that out on day three and start waiting for conditions to lighten. It's day three, day four, day five, day six. It's day seven before I can pull that para-anchor back in and start rowing again.
Shelby Stanger:
You're just waiting and rocking out in the middle of the ocean?
Tez Steinberg:
I'm just bouncing around the cabin, banging my head into the walls. I've got a helmet on my head, strapped down to my bunk. I call up my boat builder on day seven. I'm like, "Dude, this is so much harder than I thought.". She's like, "Yeah. Yeah, it's really tough. Do you want to quit?". And I was like, "Yeah, I do.", and she's like, "Cool, that's totally normal. Most people would want to quit right now. And if you do, know that I wouldn't hold it against you.". She gave me that permission, which is huge.
I wanted to be seen and acknowledged for what I was going through in that time, and she implicitly knew that. And then, when she gave me that permission allowed me to say to myself, "Okay, I can quit, but make the decision I'm not going to quit today.". That's what I started telling myself pretty much every day for the next month, "I can quit, but not today.".
Shelby Stanger:
How would you quit halfway?
Tez Steinberg:
That's part of it.
Shelby Stanger:
I don't think you could.
Tez Steinberg:
It is very inelegant, and that's part of the beauty and terror of an ocean row. Even if I decide, okay, I'm done, it's so inconvenient and costly to give up. It would be a passing vessel that comes and picks me up, and then I would abandon my boat in which I've made a huge personal investment. And then, obviously, there's letting everyone else down, who I've told I'm going to do this, and the cause and all these things. So, there's a high deal of accountability and a high cost to quitting, that it helps to force you forward even when it's tough.
Then after about five weeks, I caught some of the trade winds that started carrying me across the Pacific and I started feeling more comfortable in the boat and started really loving the experience of being out at sea.
Shelby Stanger:
What happens at night? Are you rowing at night? Are you sleeping at night? Are you scared at night? Something happens when it's dark, for me, I get totally scared.
Tez Steinberg:
I get it. It's funny. When I left California, I... There's a little mast light on the boat and I left it on for the first 10 days and I realized I'm scared of the dark out here. And then finally after 10 days, I'm like, dude, turn off the light, turn off the light. And I'm like, oh, my gosh. This sky is so incredible. The stars are out of this world. I've been lucky to see some dark skies around the world, but it was a different story on the ocean.
On a cloudy night, the night is very difficult, especially if it's rough. Because then I'm rowing, I can't see when the waves are coming, which means I can't time my strokes. The waves end up catching the oar. The oar then jams me in the chest or the crotch. It really hurts. And there's no way to even predict when that's going to happen. When conditions are rough, which is also likely at night that I have to be on the oars to try and hold ground, those are some of the hardest nights.
The moments like that, I'm like, why the heck am I doing this? But then the very next day I have this moment where I'm like, this is the best thing in the world, I don't ever want to be off this boat.
Shelby Stanger:
About halfway through Tez's row from California to Hawaii, he started to feel more present than he'd ever felt before. The beauty of the ocean captivated him and being out there all alone was invigorating. On the water, Tez kept a pretty strict routine. He rowed for about 12 hours a day with breaks only for food, navigation and communication with his land team.
How soon did you see land? Or how long did it take to see Hawaii, the islands?
Tez Steinberg:
I saw it in day 70, so 10 weeks later.
Shelby Stanger:
And then, what was that like? What went through your head?
Tez Steinberg:
That was pretty cool to see it on day 70. I knew at that point I had about 100 miles left to reach Oahu. I knew I wanted to arrive in daylight, because arriving in the dark is super dangerous. Day 70, I'm like, okay, I got 100 miles to go, if I want to make it before dark tomorrow, I need to row nonstop. So, I row all of day 70. I row through the night and there's shooting stars and tons of bioluminescent plankton. The sun comes up and it's just the most epic sunrise.
At this point now, I've been rowing for 24 hours. And because I'm so tired from 24 hours, my body's struggling to deal with the heat. I'm rowing and getting more and more tired, and I start repeating to myself out loud, "My body is hot, but I am fine. I am rowing to the finish." And I start just repeating that to myself for hours. And somehow, maybe it's a cloud came overhead or the little mantra changed my physiology, but I started to feel okay and cooled down, and ended up making it into Oahu just before sunset on day 71, after rowing the last 36 hours nonstop.
Shelby Stanger:
Tell me more. You land, what happens?
Tez Steinberg:
My brother and sister-in-law are there, and there's a small group of folks at the Kaneohe Yacht Club. It was the pandemic, things in Hawaii were pretty shut down. It was really, really strange to step off the boat. In fact, after I pull up safely into the dock and I'm standing on the boat and looking at everyone, they're looking at me like, "Are you going to get off?" And I was like, okay, okay, it's time. It's time. But I literally hesitated to step off the boat. I wanted to keep going.
My body was broken down. I was done. I was tired. I needed a break, I needed to rest. But it was actually bittersweet, because at this point I really was loving being able to witness all these incredible animals and the wildlife and the skies and feeling like I was in a flow state most days.
Shelby Stanger:
That first row was so big for you. What did you learn about yourself?
Tez Steinberg:
Part of what I learned is that my inner critic is quite loud. At the end of this trip, I looked back on it and I was like, you did an awesome job. Four years ago, you didn't know anything about any of this. I was the first person to row from California to Hawaii as their first ocean row. It was groundbreaking, what I did, and yet I tend to look back on it and see the things I could have done better or different, which is like, okay, dude, you really need to make peace with that.
Shelby Stanger:
When Tez Steinberg finally landed in Hawaii after spending 71 days rowing from California, he hesitated to step off his boat. It was Tez's first major expedition, and he'd gotten used to the quiet of being in the middle of the ocean, all by himself. It took him almost a year to feel normal again.
In the process of returning to his life on land, Tez was also faced with the reality of current events. The COVID pandemic was still raging. There were intense wildfires on the west coast, and his home state of Colorado was in a serious drought. It reinforced something he'd seen on the ocean, something that inspired his next wild idea.
Tez Steinberg:
I mentioned how beautiful the ocean was and how much I fell in love with it. But it wasn't only beautiful, it was also heartbreaking at times, because I saw an enormous amount of plastic. The farther I went from California, and the closer I got to Hawaii, the more and more plastic I saw. It was mostly broken down, smaller micro-plastics or meso-plastics. The biggest objects I saw were ghost nets, which are discarded fishing nets, saw several of those. That's the largest constituent of ocean plastic by weight. But by pieces, there's just trillions and trillions and trillions of pieces of plastic in the ocean. It was so thick that it actually affects the visibility.
People imagine the Pacific Garbage Patch is like a floating island of trash, and that's not actually an accurate representation. It's more like air pollution. When you are in a city and you can't see other buildings, or you're here in Colorado and you can't see the mountains, it's like that, where these micro-plastics are so small that they affect the visibility. It's more like a smog in the water. When I got to Hawaii, I'd had this duality of, wow, the ocean is so absolutely gorgeous, and, holy crap, we are destroying it. And I wanted to do something about it.
Shelby Stanger:
As soon as Tez finished his first expedition, he started planning his next row from Hawaii to Australia. The mission for round two: to clean up pollution in the ocean. Specifically, Tez would raise money to build river barriers, which stop plastics from getting out to sea. He was able to get some brands to sponsor the trip and support his mission, including AG1 and GoPro.
Once he secured the funding, Tez once again turned his focus to physical preparations. The row from Hawaii to Australia was roughly 5,000 miles, more than double the distance of his first row, with much harsher conditions. He was training hard and getting ready to depart in late 2022 when he was faced with a serious hurdle.
So, you decide to do this, and it's only a few years later, but you have a pretty big health scare.
Tez Steinberg:
Yeah. July 13th 2022, had a pretty normal day, ran some meetings, worked out, ran some errands. And at the end of the day, walking up a set of stairs, I get sudden chest pain. At first I think, okay, maybe I swallowed some water wrong. But after a few minutes, I actually realized I was having a heart attack. I drove myself to the hospital and I was right. Spent two days in the ICU and was discharged. This was a month before my 35th birthday.
The doctor's like, "I don't know if you're ever going to run ultra marathons again or row across an ocean.". But in my mind I'm like, are you kidding me? Of course I am. We were never able to determine exactly what caused it, but went through the normal recovery protocol. And after months, was able to get the green light from my doctors and resume training. It's one thing to get the green light, it's a whole other thing for me to redevelop trust in my body
Shelby Stanger:
Mentally, what did you do? How did you get through that?
Tez Steinberg:
It was a very slow process and difficult, because I'd spent 10, 15 years developing this relationship with my body where I knew it would do what I asked, and then it failed me in the biggest way possible. Thankfully, I was living up in Nederland, Colorado where there's not only beautiful places to walk, but a lot of them don't have cell service, which was a really uncomfortable but necessary step to start walking out of cell range. Because in the back of my head, or more accurately, right in the forefront of my mind, I'm like, if something were to happen out here and I have to hustle back to my car, I'm not going to recover from a second heart attack the way I did from a first one.
But I also know that I'm not just going to live around this little bubble near a hospital for the rest of my life, and I want to get myself back to a place where I can get back in that boat and live the life I want to live. So, I just started going on little walks: a mile, two miles, and getting to a point where I could go out into the woods and not think what would happen if something happened here and just be able to be present again.
Shelby Stanger:
What does your mom think of you doing all these things?
Tez Steinberg:
She was less than pleased.
Shelby Stanger:
I can imagine.
Tez Steinberg:
Yeah. When I had the heart attack, I didn't want to tell my mom because I knew how scared she would be. I went 10 days before I called her, and then when I called her, she was going through her own process and actually died two weeks after my heart attack.
Shelby Stanger:
Oh, I'm so sorry.
Tez Steinberg:
Thank you.
Shelby Stanger:
So, you decide that you have this heart attack, you've just lost your mom, and you're going to just keep going anyway.
Tez Steinberg:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean...
Shelby Stanger:
You might be cut from a different cloth, Tez.
Tez Steinberg:
Yeah, I...
Shelby Stanger:
Or maybe this is how you deal with it, which is really noble. My dad died of a sudden heart attack when I was little, and that is 100% why I do all these things in my... For much of my life, I was like, life is short, I have to fit this all in. But nature has always been really healing and doing adventure has always given me courage and made me feel like life is worth living.
Tez Steinberg:
That's exactly it, yeah. It's that being outdoors, connecting with nature is healing. And also, when my dad died, it really made me realize how short life is and to do something special with mine. And even though it was wildly uncomfortable to continue with the expedition after my heart attack, it was like I wouldn't ever forgive myself for not trying.
It was a long road, but just also a matter of trusting this is a crazy life that I lead, but it's mine.
Shelby Stanger:
In December 2023, 18 months after Tez's heart attack, he pushed off from the shores of Hawaii. The second expedition was an entirely different beast. He encountered intense storms and waves that were taller than anything he'd experienced the first time around. There were also navigational hazards like islands and reefs that he had to avoid. And because he left in the winter, the days were shorter, which meant he had less opportunity to generate solar power. Any of these obstacles alone would've been hard to manage, but together they were overwhelming.
Tez Steinberg:
I knew it would be more difficult. It's a much longer expedition. It crosses the equator. There's counter currents. There's no perfect season to do it. All these different challenges, and so I didn't realize the second row wouldn't just be harder. It would be 10 times harder than the first one.
Shelby Stanger:
Wow, okay. How? What do you mean? One, you know what you know. The first time there's a little bit of naivety, so you don't know what you don't know. Now you know, which sucks worse.
Tez Steinberg:
It does. It's less the knowing, and it's more that the punches were way bigger, way stronger. The big water I faced in that first expedition, that first week where I was on para-anchor, that was baby stuff compared to the conditions between Hawaii and Australia. It was also a super El Niño year, which means hotter ocean, more clouds, more storms.
It was just a whole other level of massive conditions, waves the size of apartment buildings, just breaking down, thunderstorms for weeks on end.
Shelby Stanger:
How do you deal with the waves that are as big as houses? What happens?
Tez Steinberg:
I quaked in my boots and prayed that they wouldn't hit me. And then when it finally did, I was like, oh my gosh, I wish it hit me sooner because the boat did so damn well. It just took it on the chin, didn't even shudder. When I finally did get hit by a huge wave, and the boat responded so well, I was like, man, I spent so much time worrying about all these waves and I wish I'd took one sooner. So, conditions were a big part of it.
The intensity of the sun on my skin was really rough. As much as I would try and cover up, I just developed an allergic reaction to the sun and developed these blisters and then open sores all over my hands, infections in my hands and in my gut. And then, even though the sun was strong, I left in the winter and short days meant a lot less power than I had in the first row, which meant less drinking water, rationing using key safety equipment, and making sure I always had battery power to film for a documentary film. So, it was just constant trade-offs.
Basically, the first row I was able to get into a flow state, and the second one, so much of it was just in this crisis management, cognitive trade-off analysis mode for four months.
Shelby Stanger:
Were there any highlights?
Tez Steinberg:
The wildlife was really, really off the charts. So many whales and dolphins and sharks, was really cool. I really wanted to see oceanic whitetip sharks. They're rare. We've lost over 90% of oceanic whitetips, and I saw them multiple times. Incredible, incredible animals.
Marlins all the time, hunting under my boat. When they strike, it's like someone dropped dynamite in the water. It just goes [explosion sound]. Powerful fish. They're 10 feet long, and they're so agile. It's incredible.
Shelby Stanger:
That's amazing. Seeing a marlin in the wild is pretty crazy. A 10-foot marlin...
Tez Steinberg:
Right? I found myself in the water with one one day, because I got in the water to clean the boat. All these barnacles and things grow on the boat and slow it down, so you got to get in, you got to scrape it off. I get in and there were these two silky sharks, which are small. They're four feet long or less. I get in and they're intimidated by me because I'm a lot bigger and I'm holding the dominant position, which is at the surface. As soon as I get in, they dive down 30 feet, and they're keeping real far away from me. I spend the next hour, hour and a half scrubbing the boat.
And then all of a sudden, as I'm just about finished, these two sharks are right up next to me. I'm like, oh, okay, there must be something bigger that's more scary than me. I look around and then there's this huge marlin behind the boat, just slowly patrolling. I'm like, okay, I think I'm going to climb back in the boat now.
Shelby Stanger:
In April of 2024, after 126 days on the water, Tez landed in Port Douglas, an hour north of Cairns, Australia. When we spoke, he'd been back on land for about seven months.
What was it like when you landed in Australia?
Tez Steinberg:
It was funny. In the first expedition, reaching Hawaii, I was hesitated to step off the boat. There was no hesitation this time. I was like, oh my God, I am so glad to be on land. And everyone's like, "What do you want? What's the first thing you want?" I was like, "Cold water.". It was so hot. The ocean got up to 93 degrees Fahrenheit. The air is solid 110 plus.
Then rowing, I'm just drenched in sweat. I need to wear clothes because the sun is so strong, so I'm just absolutely soaking wet from sweat. Take buckets of ocean water to pour over myself to cool off, but when it's 93, it doesn't make a big difference. After months of that and skin all peeling off, I was just like, I am ready to be done. I reached the shore in Port Douglas and had a nice, tall glass of water. It was the best bit of water I've had in my whole life.
Shelby Stanger:
Wow. How has it been this last year, since you've been done with this giant row?
Tez Steinberg:
Being back, on the one hand, is easier to integrate to the mechanics of daily life, because I was excited to come back to society and the luxuries that we have in our life and the support of friends and community. It was different from the first row, where I was craving to be on the water and in nature. Now I'm like, I am stoked to go out to restaurants and see friends and take a hot shower. I was excited to come back to that. Those are the superficial ways of integration, the mechanics of it.
The deeper level of integration that I'm just starting to work on now is: In the second row, I was putting on armor to survive. Because all of these challenges throughout... Right up until the end of the row, instead of getting through one hurdle, it would just stay present, and then there'd be another one and another one. So when I finally reached Australia, it was skin issues, GI issues, power shortages, broken water-maker, everything at the end where it was like, I need to reach land now or things will be very bad.
I put on more and more armor for survival, and now that I'm back on land, I'm like, okay, I have to learn to take that off again and redevelop my empathy. I'm just now starting the deeper work of really integrating from the second row.
Shelby Stanger:
I really appreciate your vulnerability and transparency. You've been through a lot. You've crossed two giant oceans. You've dealt with a lot of loss. You had a heart attack. You do deserve to just go chill.
Tez Steinberg:
What I'm going to do is learn how to sail. Because turns out there are these things called sailboats. You use the wind to your advantage. There's enough space for friends. And there's a fridge. Shocker. I'm going to learn how to sail this winter, and I'm excited to take others out on the ocean next.
Shelby Stanger:
I love that Tez wants to get on the water, but is ready for it to be a little easier than his rows, maybe even relaxing. If you want to follow along on Tez's adventures and see pictures and videos from his expeditions, you can follow Tez on Instagram, @TezSteinberg. That's T-E-Z S-T-E-I-N-B-E-R-G.
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI podcast network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producers are Jenny Barber and Hanna Boyd. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby.
As always, we love it when you follow the show, take time to rate it and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.