Jason Caldwell balancing adventure and family life
By Mark Carman
World record holder and professional adventurer Jason Caldwell has his sights on his next big thing while living family life in the meantime.
Living the life of an adventurer is not for most. One small part of the year you are out risking your life pushing your body to the limits. The rest of the time, in the case of Jason Caldwell, you are a family and businessman living the somewhat quiet life.
Caldwell and his Latitude 35 racing team of four — paired with Duncan Roy, Angus Collings and Jordan Shuttleworth — made history this past June 29 when they rowed across the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco to Waikiki Harbor Hawaii. The journey took a mere 30 days, 7 hours and 30 minutes, breaking the previous record of 39 days, 9 hours and 56 minutes set in 2016.
“You’re in a 30-foot boat for 30 days,” Caldwell explained. “You are in a high stress environment a dangerous environment. You are getting beat up, you’re malnourished, sleep deprived, dehydrated, sores all over your body. You’ve got tendinitis in your hands.”
Sounds fun, eh? 2,400 nautical miles non-stop in two-man, two-hour shifts soaking wet for a month. Sleep is in a tiny cabin after you strip off your clothes and recover in a sleeping bag trying to get warm while consuming another bag of soggy food.
Jason Caldwell balances adventure and family life
The journey for Caldwell started as a kid in San Francisco. He was your standard baseball and football fan listening to the San Francisco Giants and 49ers on radio. He played both sports before getting injured playing baseball college at Sonoma State.
A rowing coach at Sonoma State approached Caldwell to try a different sport which he quickly fell in love with. Caldwell joined the elite Vesper Boat Club in Philadelphia after college hoping to keep his new passion going. Upon arrival, he learned was not the biggest or strongest or most experienced rower at the club and in general did not belong with his pedestrian experience level. Caldwell knew he needed to somehow up his initial value.
“I started doing little things to make myself irreplaceable,” Caldwell said. “I made it so that they loved me. I was the guy picking up people at the bars when they were drunk when they shouldn’t have been there. Before I knew it, I had a bunch of brothers in that boat that didn’t want me to be out of that boat.”
Fast forward to 2021, Caldwell has set 11 World Records. Latitude 35 doubles as both his racing team and as a leadership development business working with large corporations where Crawford is the CEO. Being stuck on a boat with three other people for 30 days trying to squeeze every last drop of energy to break a World Record is a leadership lesson few learn.
“I’d say the number one thing about leadership is building trust without which nothing else really matters,” Caldwell said. “If my teammates don’t trust me and I in turn don’t trust them, we are on the road to ruins. I’ve been in leadership development for almost 17 years now and have played with all these complex equations of the definition of leadership. Now I just break it down to one word, trust.”
Family life is in Danville, California, 31 miles from San Francisco. Caldwell is married and has a soon to be two year old son. The family system is also built on trust.
“I like family life, I love a sense of routine,” Caldwell said. “I feel like I have two separate lives. I have to go out there, I get restless after a year if I’m not out there. My wife knows that so does my entire family. When I’m out there I do get that fulfillment, but I also want to come home.”
Out there. We all have our own form of what “out there” is. Fishing, camping, travel, or in the case of Caldwell, being a row boat on the Pacific Ocean with waves crashing into you in the dead of night for 30 days.
“The more I do this stuff the less macho I feel I need to be,” Caldwell explained. “It’s not a a tough guy thing. You talk to people who are passionate, that passion is a need– it’s not a nice to have– and I’m a better person when I go and do these things.”
Caldwell is planning to take some time away from the ocean, maybe even permanently eyeing big rivers as his next adventure stop. The only real certainty is that he will keep going. The love of rowing and pushing the limits is still in his blood.
“I always found that kind of ridiculous that we feel ashamed that we still want to be astronauts when we’re like 27 years old,” Caldwell said. “I didn’t want to be an astronaut, but I always wanted to be an explorer and I just figured I’m still going to go do this stuff.”
Follow your dreams. Keep that inner child alive. Push the limits. Do your best. Be a good teammate. There are a lot of lessons that can be learned and motivation gained from someone rowing across the Pacific Ocean breaking a World Record.
“I’m here to tell you if you’ve got a dream keep going,” Caldwell said. “I know that sounds cliche, but its cause not enough people are doing it. Im hoping that people are listening and even if it something small like playing the piano, take up those piano lessons. Let’s do it.”