Earning the podium: How Transpac's first finishers did it
by David Schmidt / Transpacific Yacht Club 14 Jul 04:35 BST
July 14, 2025
Few finish lines are more spectacular—or more well-earned—than that of the Transpacific Yacht Race. Stretching from a starting line off Los Angeles's Point Fermin, to a finish off of Honolulu's Diamond Head, this 2,225 nautical miles of Pacific gives sailors ample opportunity to press their off-the-breeze inventory against typically cooperative tradewinds. This biennial race is organized by Transpacific Yacht Club with three pursuit-style starts so that all finishers can arrive in Honolulu at a steady pace over several days. As of press time, a total of 19 boats have crossed the finish line, with 30 arriving over the coming few days.
For some competitors, this stretch of sea represents less than a week of work; for others, time is measured in weeks. Irrespective of one's elapsed time, all finishers must ultimately pass between 762-foot tall Diamond Head Lighthouse and the red flashing R2 buoy, about three quarters of a mile offshore. While the sight of Diamond Head can be a salve for sea-sore eyes, the waters between the bricks and the buoy display a wealth of color—from aquamarine beach-side shallows, to darker green reefs, to navy-blue hues of Moloka'i Channel.
While all boats compete for the race's handicap honors, Transpac's coveted Barn Door Trophy celebrates sheer offshore speed and is awarded to the fastest monohull finisher, sans calculators or rating rules. To earn a spot on the trophy—a magnificent, four-foot slab of carved Koa wood hanging in Hawaii Yacht Club—is to make history amongst 120 years of ocean-racing titans.
Bryon Ehrhart, owner and skipper of 88-foot Juan Kouyoumdjian-designed maxi Lucky (née Rambler 88), earned this honor on Friday, July 11, at approximately 0723, Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time, sending the 2,225 nautical miles in just 5 days, 21 hours, 23 minutes and 49 seconds. Ripping across the finish line at 24 knots, Lucky was flying a full mainsail and triple headsails, with her 17-person crew piled onto the windward quarter for additional righting moment.
Lucky's is the fifth-fastest elapsed time in the history of the race, which is downright impressive given the significant light-air patch that parked on the racecourse last week, coupled with reports that the tradewinds have been a click softer than normal this year.
"I don't think I've ever finished a race going 24 knots, and so I had a chance to really see the power of the boat shine," said Ehrhart in a post-finish interview. "The Moloka'i Channel is famous and there's a reason it's at the end of the race: It's your last challenge, and you better meet it."
Ehrhart should know.
Racing his previous Lucky in the 2021 Transpac, the rudder of the Judel-Vrolijk 72 divorced itself from the yacht near the finishing line, quashing what had been seven days of magnificent sailing. The team was towed ashore by the U.S. Coast Guard.
"This was five and a half days of glorious sailing, and we got to finish," said Ehrhart of the 2025 edition. "The epic thing for me was coming back four years after losing our rudder 30 miles off the finish and meeting that challenge."
The challenge included developing new sail technology, meticulous vessel preparation, flawless crew work and smart calls, compliments of world-famous navigator Stan Honey. Lucky finished with zero gear breakage, which Ehrhart called a testament to the crew's pre-race preparations.
"This is a water desert that's as beautiful as any other desert you'll see," said Ehrhart of the racecourse's sweep of ocean. "You finally see a piece of land. And when you see it, you've got Diamond Head," he said.
Once at the docks, Bill Guilfoyle, Commodore of the Transpacific Yacht Club, and other race officials welcomed Lucky to the Aloha State with ice-cold Whittier Trust mai tais served inside pineapples, a tradition that honors all finishers, irrespective of their arrival times or durations.
"You don't get leis anywhere else in the world for finishing a race," said Ehrhart.
While Lucky powered across the Pacific with a small army aboard, the second yacht to cross the finish line—Fred Courouble and Charles Devanneaux, co-skippers of Rahan, Devanneaux's stripped-down Beneteau First 36—took a decidedly different tack as the race's only two-handed team.
"When you have a crew, you have a specific job. You do a little bit, then you go to sleep," said Courouble at a dockside interview moments after Rahan made landfall. "I don't say it's boring, but it's a normal challenge, you know? And the more you have challenges, the more interesting the race is."
The price for this fun? "Your lack of sleep," Courouble continued. "You start to hallucinate."
Rahan's race got sporty about 400 nautical miles from the finish when the spinnaker wrapped around the forestay, creating what Courouble termed "a beautiful salami" of unusable sailcloth.
Despite this setback, the two-handed crew, who have been racing together since 2012, continued attacking the remaining miles. Devanneaux said their final night at sea was their finest, a sentiment echoed by his lone shipmate.
"Last night was good because we were fighting Picosa, our direct competition," said Courouble, referring to Doug and Jack Jorgensen's J/111, the third boat to finish. Courouble and Devanneaux did the logical thing: They hoisted their biggest kite.
"It was a good decision, but the boat was flying," Courouble said. "We were wiped out a lot."
The decision paid handsome visual dividends: Rahan finished as the Hilton Hawaiian Village's weekly Friday evening fireworks lit the night sky.
Picosa was racing fully crewed, though Jack Jorgensen reported that sleep deprivation was also an issue for their last few nights. While the team avoided making any sail salami, they struggled with battery issues. "Everything was off except our instruments," said Jack in a post-racing interview, adding that the team ran their engine in idle for almost four straight days to keep the electrons flowing.
Then there were the night watches.
"We had a lot of squall activity at night, and the nights were dark," said Jack, who was skippering with his dad, Doug—who is celebrating the 50th anniversary of his first Transpac—aboard. "It led to good seamanship and being able to change sails quickly and change modes fast when the wind came up."
As for their final day at sea, Jack reported that the team played things cool.
"We knew we were solidly in second behind Rahan, so we just wanted to sail conservatively and not break anything," he said. "We had a couple huge wipeouts earlier in the race that were pretty sketch, and we were trying to avoid any huge issues, losing any sails, or hurting anyone."
The move paid off, and the team finished in the dark, about nin hours astern of Rahan.
Instead of fireworks or battery issues, Lodos, Tolga Cezik and Rade Trimceski's Seattle-based J/111, crossed the finish line on Saturday morning as surfers were catching rides off Waikiki.
"Relieved, ecstatic, excited," Jennifer Hoag, Lodos's trimmer, bow person and occasional driver, said in a phone-call interview as the team was motoring into Ala Wai Harbor for their leis, mai tais and much-anticipated cheeseburgers. "We pushed hard our last night," she said. Abandoning their watch schedule, they hoisted their biggest downwind kite despite the occupational hazards.
They white-knuckled through a 30-knot squall for 30 minutes, but the tactical gambit was spot-on: "We actually put a lot of distance on the boats behind us just from last night."
While the adrenaline flowed during Lodos' final night at sea, dopamine and serotonin also played prominent roles during the voyage.
"We had one sunset where we had dolphins playing in our bow," said Hoag, adding she was fortunate to share her first-ever Transpac experience alongside her dad, John, who was one of Lodos' watch captains and primary drivers. "We had our kite up on a plane and these dolphins are playing with us. We're going 16, 17 knots at sunset—it was just beautiful."
Nautical beauty and sailing with one's father were also major themes aboard Don Wilson's Gunboat 68 Convexity2, co-skippered by John Hildebrand and Josh McCaffery and crewed by a Murderer's Row of sailors who boast multiple wins in The Ocean Race (née The Volvo Ocean Race).
"I got to sail one of the most amazing oceans in the world with a really unique crew on a fast, cool boat," said Ava Wilson, one of Convexity2's drivers, moments after finishing her first Transpac, also with her father, Don, onboard. "Ripping at 27 knots across the Pacific Ocean was absolutely awesome."
Convexity2 delivered big grins, but, said Wilson, the race wasn't without its tests.
"We had pretty solid bow stuff going into our early morning today," she said. "It was a rude awakening for me."
As was the team's occasional loss of hydraulic power.
"It was 12:30 in the morning, pitch black and our hydraulics weren't working," Wilson said. "We were looking to do a maneuver, and we had to get everybody on deck and figure out where the issue was coming from."
This, of course, was where the Convexity2 crew's vast offshore experience shined like July 10's full moon.
"Everybody was really levelheaded," said Wilson. "The crew saw some hesitation in me, and they were like, 'look, it's all good.' And they told me exactly what to do, and I was able to do it. We worked through it quite quickly and got back on track."
Hydraulics hijinks aside, Wilson clearly loved her experience.
"My best watch was last night," she said. "Getting to see the sunset into the stars and the full moon, unobstructed, and we had 15 to 20 knots of breeze, and were cruising along—it was incredible."
Find out more at transpacyc.com