ROSEMOUNT, Minn. — On a spectacular, happy-to-be-alive summer morning, Nick Rahn scurried around Roseville’s Central Park, preparing to host a 5K fundraiser for his organization, Warriors Next Adventure. But he couldn't escape the lurking shadows of his last contest, a trans-Atlantic rowing event that tested the limits of perseverance and threatened his survival.
“This is the first official race since December,” Rahn noted.
Like the August 5K, the rowing contest was part of his group’s pursuit of post-military adventure. Ultimately, Rahn’s group seeks to help veterans find purpose. An Air Force veteran himself, Rahn knows life after the military can be tough.
“I struggled with suicide myself,” he said.
Those participating in the 5K valued and marveled at his quest.
“I’m a veteran myself, and he’s just a really inspiring guy,” Carter Jacobson said.
“He tried rowing across the Atlantic Ocean, which is, that’s pretty gutsy,” added Joe Eckes.
Certainly gutsy, but the Atlantic experience was also profound for Rahn because it cemented his purpose in life.
“The time that I thought I was going to die, all I could think about was that I have so much unfinished business. I have so many people to help. There’s so many vets that rely on, not me, but the idea of Warriors Next Adventure,” Rahn recalled.
On Dec. 12, Rahn and three fellow Air Force veterans were the first boat out in the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge – a 3,000-mile race from the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa to the Caribbean. The crew was rowing and raising money for a separate veteran’s organization, Fight Oar Die, which owned the vessel, while continuing Rahn’s mission of showing the adventure can continue.
In a 28-foot boat that looked more like an oversized canoe with cramped, covered sleeping quarters at both ends, Tommy Hester of Omaha, Nebraska; Will Janssen of Webster, Wisconsin; and Chad Miller of Buffalo, New York, joined Rahn on the two-hours-on, two-hours-off rowing adventure.
They had spent the summer of 2022 training on Lake Superior.
“I don’t know... if it was anyone else, I don’t know if we would have made it. So, we were pretty lucky to have the perfect team,” Rahn said.
Hundreds of miles and a couple of weeks in, Rahn’s team received word that rough weather was approaching – weather that would turn out to be the crew’s perfect storm and that pushed them roughly 80 miles off course to the south.
“(Dec.) 26, 27 and 28, there is about 30-to-40-foot swells continuously with about anywhere from 20-to-50 (23 to 57 mph) nautical mile winds,” Rahn remembered.
The moment that transformed the race into a fight for survival came around 3:30 a.m. on Dec. 28, according to Rahn.
“I woke up to the sound of a giant wave, and it sounded like a sea monster coming after us. And right as the wave hit us, we turned almost completely sideways, and then it sounded like a freight train coming out of nowhere to hit us. I thought we got hit by a ship; I was pretty certain that we were dead,” Rahn says.
The impact tossed the two harnessed rowers, Janssen and Miller, overboard; the other two men were in their bunks, and Rahn recalls he was temporarily knocked out and trapped.
“It got to the point where the boat was continuing to sink, and I was filling up with water so quickly, I started yelling out to Chad, like, ‘I don’t want to, I don’t want to die in here.’”
Miller freed Rahn.
The crew also successfully deployed and boarded a life raft, but in the chaos, Rahn dropped a knife that punctured the raft. He plugged the hole with his thumb.
“Lucky for me, I got fat fingers,” Rahn noted.
The crew also managed to grab a GPS and VHF radio that was used for every half-hour mayday calls that finally connected that evening.
“We said, ‘Mayday, Mayday, Mayday! This is Woobie Crew.’ And I told them to say, ‘If you can hear us, give us two mic clicks.’ And we heard click, click. All four of us started crying,” Rahn said.
The responding boat was a nearly 600-foot Dutch vessel, the Hanze Goteborg.
During our interview with Rahn, for the first time since the ordeal, he watched the video of the rescue that was shot by one of the Dutch boat’s crew members.
“This is giving me anxiety, man,” Rahn said with a nervous chuckle.
In a chaotic life-and-death dance, the huge ship and tiny life raft bobbed side by side on the rough sea. Rahn was the first to climb to safety. Janssen, who posted a video of the rescue on YouTube, was next. But Rahn felt no relief because rescues remained on an unrelenting ocean.
“So as Chad starts to climb, he dislocated his shoulder, and he falls back into the water, and Tommy pulls him in right as the wave pushed them back in the life raft,” Rahn said.
All four eventually made it on board; Hester was last.
“I remember patting him on the head and telling him I loved him. Kissed him on the forehead. I just remember saying, ‘It’s over,’” Rahn said.
One crew member, as Rahn recalled, asked, “‘What are you doing here?’ And we said, ‘We’re rowing a boat across the ocean.’ He looks down at the life raft in the water, like as it gets sucked up underneath, he’s like, ‘That’s not a rowboat.’”
Thirteen days on the big boat remained until arriving in Canada, and Rahn has remained friends with crew members whom he said “did everything right” on the rescue.
Roughly eight months later, Rahn still has nightmares but no regrets about embarking on the Atlantic journey.
“If me and these guys made it across the ocean, that’s a cool story, but what ended up happening to us, I mean, it’s unbelievable,” Rahn said.
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