Sean Jansen, a lifelong surfer and adventurer, standup paddled over 1,000 miles along the coast of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula with his camping gear, food, and camera strapped to his board. His goal was to document the journey and raise awareness about the vaquita, an endangered porpoise native to the region.
Sean Jansen, a lifelong surfer and adventurer, standup paddled over 1,000 miles along the coast of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula with his camping gear, food, and camera strapped to his board. His goal was to document the journey and raise awareness about the vaquita, an endangered porpoise native to the region.
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Shelby Stanger:
In 2022, lifelong surfer and adventurer Sean Jansen set out to standup paddle over 1000 miles along the coast of the Baja Peninsula in Mexico. He strapped his camping gear, food, and camera to his board and made his way south. Sean's wild idea was about more than just traveling down this beautiful coastline. He was on a mission to raise awareness about an endangered sea animal and overcome some personal battles along the way. 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.
If you've ever been on a standup paddleboard, also known as an SUP, you know that it's hard to go anywhere fast. SUPs can only move about half the speed of a canoe or a kayak. Even the slightest bit of wind can make it really difficult to balance. When Sean Jansen set out to SUP over 1000 miles, he felt pretty comfortable on the board. He'd been surfing and paddleboarding since he was young.
Sean Jansen, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. You have a wild idea that I love. Excited to talk to you about it.
Sean Jansen:
I'm really humbled to be here, Shelby, because I have listened to this show for years. Never in a million years did I think I was going to be here talking to you.
Shelby Stanger:
Aw, that's so sweet. Let's start with your background. You grew up around the ocean I'm guessing, you're from Orange County, California, San Clemente. Did you grow up surfing, life-guarding?
Sean Jansen:
Yeah, I grew up as a die-hard surfer. I started standing up on my boogie board when I was six or seven, and then my mom got me a surfboard for my 12th birthday. I'm born and raised San Clemente. So I grew up, I was very fortunate, I was able to run down to my local beach and just go surf. I was on the surf team. I was even on the soccer team as well, but I would surf in between soccer practice. The ocean was always something that was there for me.
That's what started the spark of going down into Baja, because San Clemente is only about an hour's drive from Tijuana. Of course, I would hang out with the older crew in San Clemente that surfed and they would always talk about these mythical waves on the Baja Peninsula. I was so infatuated with the idea that eventually a buddy of mine's dad decided to take a bunch of us down there at the age of 17. I couldn't believe how wild the Baja Peninsula really is. There's cactus, there's roads that are half-paved, half not. A lot of the roads are dirt roads. It was so magical to be able to practice your adorable little two years of Spanish in high school and go down there and try to buy gas, or buy a taco.
I never felt uncomfortable. There's a lot of stigma with Mexico. Mexico has been my second home since I was 17 and I'm 36 now. There was just a lot of educational points in my childhood that I'm extremely grateful for.
Shelby Stanger:
I love your story. Also, really quickly, I learned to surf when I was 12, I played soccer. Every excuse I could to ditch soccer practice and surf I took. There just wasn't a lot of opportunities for girls to surf, there was way more in soccer back then. But I completely relate to your story, it's really cool. And I also found standup paddling when I came out, I loved it. But I'm curious how you found it?
Sean Jansen:
Well, I was very lucky in that I graduated high school in 2007 and my neighbor next door, I need to give him credit and I need to drop his name, his name's Rob Rojas. He's a household name in the paddling world. He started standup paddling and I started noticing him strapping these things on top of his car. I was so curious about it. I was like, "What is that thing?"
There was a family trip he did where I was house-sitting for him because he was out of town. He was like, "All right, Sean, if you want, you could borrow my standup paddleboard." I totally did. I took it out, right out at my local beach there. I was like, "Whoa, this is really cool." I was still a die-hard surfer and I knew that conundrum between surfers and paddlers. Whenever you see a kayak out in the ocean, you're shaking your head like, "What are you doing?"
Shelby Stanger:
But it's a vehicle to get from place to place, it's like a bike on the water.
Sean Jansen:
1000%. That very first day, I vividly remember this. I was like, "I want to do an overnight trip in these." That was my first thought. I didn't want to go surfing. I was like, "How do I connect the dots doing an over-nighter somewhere?" I took to it like a duck to water. I stood up right away. I didn't have any balance issues because I grew up as a surfer.
Shelby Stanger:
How did you decide to do this crazy, wild idea? I've interviewed enough adventurers at this point in my life and usually there's something that pushes somebody to go say one day, "Oh, I'm going to go paddle 1000 miles."
Sean Jansen:
Well, I conceptualized this trip while I was dealing with a monumental personal battle, and that battle for me was alcoholism. I knew at the time that I had a problem with it. I was trying my best to get sober. What had happened was I had just returned from a trip to Baja where I was a photographer for a friend's wedding down in Cabo. My alcoholism got so bad on that trip that I nearly lost the memory cards for my buddy's wedding on the beach that night because of how drunk I was. I remember returning from that trip going, "Okay, Sean, you can't keep doing this."
Shelby Stanger:
As Sean made a plan to get sober, he set a goal to SUP along the entire Baja Peninsula. He started looking at maps and researching the coastline. Sean would paddle down the Gulf of California, also known as the Sea of Cortez. It's a sliver of ocean between Baja and mainland Mexico. As he studied the area, Sean learned about a kind of porpoise called a Vaquita that lives in the Sea of Cortez. It's a small animal about four feet long, with a short nose almost like it ran into a wall. The Vaquita is endangered. When Sean first heard of them, there were only about 10 left in the world. He decided that the recovery of this animal would be the mission for his paddle.
But before Sean could even think about the logistics of this trip, he needed to get sober. He started meditating, trail running, and getting outside as much as possible. It took some time, but eventually, after two years of sobriety, the reality of his wild idea started coming into focus.
In essence, you decide to, through hike, but through paddle the Baja Peninsula. When you said this idea out loud, you're such a wild guy anyway, was everybody like, "Okay, yeah, Sean's going to go do this?" Or did you get any pushback?
Sean Jansen:
Well, I didn't tell anyone. I called my mom on October 9th from a beach in San Felipe going, "Hey, by the way, I'm going to go paddle Baja." I love my mom to death, I'm not going to try to shoot her down. I know everyone says moms worry, but my mom takes it to the Nth level. A big part of my sobriety journey was I had to temporarily block people because I associated them with my alcoholic past. I was kind of a loner going up into this Baja trip. I had a very small core group of people. I had one friend that knew what I was doing, and it's simply because she was going to be my guardian angel. I had a little Garmin inReach GPS, so I would text her every single day. I gave her a map of Baja so she knew exactly where I was. At that last text, she'd put a pin there. And was like, okay, if I don't check in the next day, she knew exactly what beach I was last at.
Aside from her, no one knew what I was doing. I did it completely alone. I was solo for this entire endeavor. No one drove down the coast to meet up with me. It turned into a very spiritual trip for me. I needed to do it. I needed to prove to myself that my sobriety wasn't for nothing and try to do something bigger than me.
Shelby Stanger:
No one knows about it except for a couple people because you're smart and you have safety involved. But what is planning like?
Sean Jansen:
I had a very small handful of overnight SUP trips in Yellowstone National Park that I had done, so I had that experience.
Shelby Stanger:
On an inflatable standup paddleboard?
Sean Jansen:
On an inflatable, yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay.
Sean Jansen:
I knew what dry bags I wanted to bring. The only research I needed to do was on my portable desalinator. Essentially, it's a water pump, but it turns sea water into fresh water. I wasn't going to do the trip without one because Baja is a desert environment. There are no freshwater streams. It's not like I could just pick up a standard backpacking water filter and stick it in a river because there are none. That was a huge challenge gear-wise.
Aside from that, it was all about knowing where I can get food and where I can get water again. Luckily, with nearly 20 years of Baja experience under my belt just on road trips, I knew where these towns were. I knew what to expect, I knew what kind of grocery store was in this location. I could time it out. I think my longest carry was 10 days, which ended up being almost two weeks because wind wouldn't let me paddle down the coast. I had to be smart about knowing where I can resupply.
The only research I really did was I would zoom in on Google Earth on 20-mile sections of coast, take a picture of that, and then I knew where a beach was that I can camp out, or how far this destination was, how far that destination was. I researched Baja maps, and none of them had the bathymetry. Bathymetry being showing the bottom sea floor and the depths and stuff. I'm sure there's one that exists, but I couldn't find it in the time leading up to my trip. I had to personally, and this was environmentally unfriendly, but I had to print out big Google Earth images on pieces of paper that were 20-mile sections of the coast and have a stack of them. That's how I literally navigated the coast.
Shelby Stanger:
Then you had to keep them dry?
Sean Jansen:
Then I had to keep them dry.
Shelby Stanger:
When Sean set off in October 2022, he had every intention of doing all 1005 miles in one fell swoop, but the Sea of Cortez had other plans. Within the first two weeks, about one-fifth of the way down the coast, Sean hit some intense winds. One night while he was sleeping on the beach, he even experienced an earthquake. The epicenter was only about 30 miles from his tent. He was committed to continuing and made slow progress, but the winds were getting stronger, forcing Sean to stay put for days at a time.
After another two weeks of battling the elements, it was clear that Sean needed to stop. He decided to get off the water and come back when the conditions were calmer. Less than six months later, Sean returned to the exact place where he'd ended his first attempt and started paddling again. But something still didn't feel right.
Sean Jansen:
The second part of the trip was the most difficult. What I mean by that is it wasn't difficult conditions-wise, but mentally I was a train wreck. Something was wrong. I remember putting my board back on the water, really excited to get back out there, but my stomach and my gut had a feeling that I can't describe. I wasn't sick, I wasn't getting nauseous, I wasn't any of that. It was one of those gut feelings where your heart's in your throat. It just feels like that awkward moment where someone makes fun of you. There's that deep, guttural emptiness. It feels empty.
That's when I know something's off. I've learned through this process that your gut is your second brain, and sometimes it's even smarter than your brain brain. But because I'm stubborn I was just like, "I'm going to put my head down and keep going because I have a forecast of five days of no wind. I'm going for it." I paddled for those five days. Then I get to one of these beaches that I've literally seen from the road, and arguably the beach that inspired the trip because I would see these waters. These waters are so stunningly beautiful. For reference, this area is called Bahia Concepcion. It's a very famous little area of Baja. Anyone that's been there knows that you see these beaches and they're jaw-dropping. This is where the postcards are of Baja.
I get there and I'm miserable. Even worse than that though is for the first time in my two-and-a-half years of being sober, I wanted a drink for whatever reason. I called this amazing friend of mine, I actually jokingly call him Dad. I met him on the trip, I didn't know him before. He knew what I was doing and he understood. He's like, "All right, Sean, I'll come pick you up. No worries, you can get back to your car that's stored in Cabo San Lucas, and just come back in October again."
Shelby Stanger:
Sean never totally understood what happened on that second attempt, but he went home and prioritized his recovery and mental health. He doubled-down on meditation, started trail running again, and started eating healthier. His efforts paid off. In October 2023, Sean set out for the third time to finish the final leg of his trip.
When Sean Jansen decided to standup paddle down the coast of the Baja Peninsula, he wasn't sure what the journey would have in store for him. Sean grew up as a surfer and had spent plenty of time hiking and trail running, so he felt pretty at peace in nature. What he hadn't done was an SUP trip longer than a couple of days.
This trip, which took several months and covered more than 1000 miles, was a totally different beast. For one, standup paddling is a pretty exposed sport. To carry hundreds of pounds of gear on top of a board is really difficult. Secondly, the area that Sean was traversing had very little fresh water, which made cooking and staying hydrated quite difficult.
Tell me what your gear is. Give me your board and everything that you take with you. From the food, to the water, and how it weighs.
Sean Jansen:
Yeah. What worked out really wonderfully was the same inflatable board I used on my Yellowstone trips prior. That same company had that exact board that was modified a little bit beefier and gnarlier, but it was a hard board. This board not only had all of the tie-downs that I needed to strap gear onto, it could hold 512 pounds. I'm not a small dude, I'm six-foot and 200 pounds as it is. Then I also had to carry up to nine gallons of fresh water with me at a time.
If you think about that, I think a gallon of water weighs eight pounds?
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah, that's heavy.
Sean Jansen:
70 to 80 pounds of water at a time. Including my 200 pound butt, and then I had my camping gear, I had my fishing gear. I was a mouthful. When I paddled up into towns, people would just gawk at me and go, "What on Earth is this guy doing?"
Shelby Stanger:
Your camping gear is tent, sleep pad?
Sean Jansen:
Yeah. The same principle with an overnight standup paddle trip goes with a backpacking trip. The lighter you are, the better and faster you are. I knew what ultralight gear was. I had a one-man Big Agnes ultralight tent. I had a 15-degree really small, light sleeping bag. I had the Thermarest Z lite sleeping pad. It weighs nothing, but it takes up space. Then my stove system was I had a Jetboil Zip. All I used it for was coffee because I didn't have the luxury of fresh water. I was drinking a gallon-and-a-half to two gallons of water a day.
If you think about that, you can't spare 16-ounces for instant mashed potatoes, or Top Ramen, or whatever it was. My food was very unsexy. I had cold burritos. I would eat tortillas, I'd eat peanut butter. When I got to a town once a week, once every other week, whatever it was, I would buy carne asada or cooked chicken. My luxury was vegetables because I didn't have a vegetable for a week at a time. But that would only be for the one or two nights, instantly leaving town, and then it's right back to cold burritos and peanut butter. That was the basics of what made up the front dry bag. I had two dry bags for this trip.
Shelby Stanger:
What was a typical day like? Sun up to sundown, what is Sean doing every day?
Sean Jansen:
Sean is an early bird. One thing that I'm still addicted to that I'm not looking to give up any time soon is coffee. I don't mess around with instant coffee in the back country. I bring a Jetboil, it's got a French press adapter. But more importantly than that, I refuse to rush my coffee time. I like to sit there quietly, enjoy it. What I would do is I would wake up at 4:00 in the morning religiously every single day, well before sunrise. Before even coffee time starts, it's always meditation. I do 10 minutes of meditation first thing in the morning no matter what. Even to this day. Meditation might be the reason I'm sober. I don't take that lightly. I'd wake up at 4:00, meditation, coffee.
What I would do with coffee though is I would just sit somewhere in the sand with it, leaning back against a dry bag, and enjoy one of the greatest underrated features of the Baja desert, and that is the night sky. I knew going into the day how my day was going to go. What I mean by that is I'm not a religious person, but I'm extremely spiritual. If I saw a shooting star that morning, I was going to have a great day. I was going to go crush 20 miles down the coast and it was going to be an awesome day. But if I didn't see a shooting star, it was going to be hell on Earth. Ironically, that was exactly how it went for that trip.
Shelby Stanger:
There was that many shooting stars?
Sean Jansen:
I would see dozens every morning.
Shelby Stanger:
Wow!
Sean Jansen:
That was my morning routine. Then I would pack up, get on the water. Before sunrise, I'd actually get on the water with my headlamp on. I would paddle for maybe one to three miles before the sun even rose above the ocean surface. Then I would try to go as far as I can. But by 11:00 or noon, the winds would often kick up pretty strong and I would be forced into a beach.
I had it so dialed that if I got on the water by roughly 5:30, 5:45, I could hit 20 miles by noon. My biggest day was 26 miles. My shortest day, aside from zero, was six. That six-mile day I stopped on purpose because I've never seen a beach so beautiful. I had to stop.
Shelby Stanger:
The coastline of the Baja Peninsula is absolutely stunning, but there's a lot of stark cliffs and rocky shores. Depending on the current or the winds, it was sometimes pretty dangerous for Sean to get to land. Over the course of his journey, there was several days where Sean was laid over on beaches or in small towns because of weather. Besides that, he also had some intense interactions with sea life.
I'm really curious. You encountered a lot of things. A hurricane, crazy winds, I imagine sharks. What was the scariest thing you encountered during your paddle?
Sean Jansen:
Of course probably the most famous was in Yellowstone, we call when a bear charges at you and turns away, we call it a bluff charge. I had that equivalent with a bull shark down in Cabo Pulmo, which was about 60 miles from the very end of the trip. I am three days away from finishing this trip. I'm paddling in water and out of my periphery, I see this brown object. Now, I've seen thousands of these brown objects on my paddle trip and it just turns out to be a rock. But this rock was moving. I look over, and all this happened within a two-second window, but I see this bull shark torpedoing at me. Like I said, this lasted probably two seconds. I look over, I see it, and then all I knew what to do was just crouch down and try to be ... I'm like, "Okay, brace for impact, here it goes." At the very last minute, inches from my board, it turns. The tail splashes water all over me, all over the deck of my board, whole nine yards, and disappears into the blue. Or so I thought.
I'm sitting there kind of frozen going, "Holy cow, did that just happen?" I remember my reaction. I said a way more dramatic curse word than crap. But I just couldn't believe it didn't hit me. It darted into the blue and I didn't know what to do. I'm out to sea a little bit. It's rocking seas, it's not super calm. I needed to focus, but the nearest beach was a 20-minute paddle away. I was nowhere near a safe point to come to the beach and try to wrap my ahead around what just happened, and regain my focus. I just keep paddling. I felt like things weren't done. The hairs are still standing up on the back of my neck.
I start scanning the environment back-and-forth and I'm not seeing anything. The water's quite deep in this area, I can't see the bottom. But then, I eventually found the courage about 30 seconds later to turn 180-degrees around and look at my tail. This bull shark is six inches from the tail of my board and it's just following me. I'm just like, "Oh my God, what is going on?" I didn't know what to do other than to keep paddling. This is the same shark that bluff charged me a little bit ago and now it's following me.
Shelby Stanger:
You weren't going to just take your paddle and try to get its nose?
Sean Jansen:
I thought about it, but the drawback is the seas were not calm. I had to focus on my balance. My trying to pivot and poke the thing while fighting two to three foot waves, there was way greater risk of falling in the water. This is not a body of water you want to fall into right now. All I knew to do was just keep paddling. It eventually, I found the courage again about a minute later to turn around, and it was gone.
I can't figure out why it didn't just hit me. It had every right to. I've seen plenty of videos of these bull sharks doing this. Through my research on bull sharks, out of all the shark species in the ocean, they have the highest level of testosterone. It had every excuse to ram the side of my board and hit me, launch me out of the water, whatever it wanted to do, and it didn't.
Shelby Stanger:
There were a lot of standout moments during Sean's time on the water. From encountering that bull shark and seeing tons of shooting stars, to maneuvering through challenging winds, and eating lots and lots of cold burritos. Finally, on December 14th, 2023, after a total of 123 days on the water, Sean completed his journey.
What was finishing like? Was there anybody there? Were you alone? What was going through your head?
Sean Jansen:
I was alone. A funny little part of my story is that whole last week of the trip, I was emotional almost every day. I would get teary-eyed leading up to it. The very last morning, I'll never forget it. Somehow, I was able to find a beach in the middle between two gargantuan resorts. Cabo San Lucas, I call it the Las Vegas of Mexico. It's very Americanized, it's very Cancun-esque.
But I get to Land's End, which is the famous arch at the very, very tip of Baja in Cabo San Lucas, and it was a very empty feeling. I wasn't emotional. I of course through my hands to the sky. I had a friend that I met up the coast, about 100 miles up the coast, and she knew someone that lived in Cabo that could go out there and take a picture of me at the very end, so I was very grateful for that person. The end experience was, for lack of a better word, was kind of lame because I wasn't alone. It's a very touristic feature at the very, very end. There was hundreds of people there. It wasn't a romantic finish, dare I say. In saying that, I don't know if I would have it any other way. That's Land End, that's Cabo. That's what it is.
Shelby Stanger:
I'm kind of smiling because that's such a typical wild idea. You do all this prep, you get so emotional, you almost die millions of times. You have these cathartic moments, you see shooting stars. You almost, right before the end, don't make it. Then you get to the end and you're like, "That's it?" And yet, you're totally changed for years to come afterwards, but God, those endings are so anticlimactic. It's tricky, especially if you're doing them totally on your own.
Throughout Sean's trip, he shared as much information as he could about the Vaquita porpoise. He posted on Facebook groups for locals, as well as on his own Instagram. Sean also wrote a book about his journey called Paddling with Porpoise, with all the proceeds going towards conservation efforts. You can find a link to buy the book in our show notes or on Sean's website, jansenjournals.com. That's J-A-N-S-E-N journals.com. You can also follow Sean on Instagram @jansen_journals.
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.