The Chase Builds: Transpac's Middle fleet sets off for Diamond Head
by David Schmidt 4 Jul 12:39 AEST
July 1, 3 & 5, 2025
Transpac 2025 © Doug Gifford
Seventeen boats begin the 2,225-mile Pacific Crossing in light air conditions in Transpac's second start.
The chase is on in the 53rd edition of the 2025 Transpacific Yacht Race, with 17 boats in three divisions departing Los Angeles today on their 2,225-mile journey to Honolulu. While these boats are competing within their own divisions, they are also chasing down the 16 entrants that started on Tuesday, July 1—preparing to be chased by 20 more that start on Saturday, July 5.
Today's starters, with longer water lines or sportier features compared to Tuesday's starters, should enjoy faster rides to the finish line off Honolulu's Diamond Head, but—as is always the case in ocean racing—Mother Nature has the majority share vote in determining dockside bragging rights.
The biennial race's three middle-start divisions cleanly crossed the starting line off Point Fermin at 1300 and sailed out in 8-9 knots of shifty, Catalina eddy-driven southerly winds. Blue skies, sunshine and flat waters were abundant, while a marine layer shrouded Catalina Island's skyline. The Transpac, considered one of the greatest offshore contests, employs a pursuit-style starting format with three starts over five days so all 53 boats converge on the finish line within a few days of one another.
At the time of this writing the fleet was on a northwesterly course with navigators beginning to make the call to tack to eventually clear Catalina Island. Dave Moore's Santa Cruz 52 Westerly made the call first, and Division Leaders are currently It's OK in Cal Maritime Division 4, Halawa in Cabrillo Boat Shop Division 5 and Reinrag2 in Garmin Division 6.
The pursuit-style format has been used in past editions, but this year the event is employing a Forecast-Time Correction Factor (F-TCF) scoring system, developed by TPYC's Technical Committee and US Sailing to compensate for variations in conditions on the different start dates.
Weather conditions rarely hold across five days, so Transpac competitors often see a favored start day in the forecast, with better breeze than the other two starting days, helping to launch a lucky set of sailors past Catalina Island and the clutches of the Southern California Bight (the waters between Point Conception and San Diego). While the race's previous wind-matrix system helped account for meteorological disparities using historical weather data, Alan Andrews, TPYC's Vice Commodore and a world-class yacht designer, said the new F-TCF system uses the latest forecast models (NOAA's GFS and HRRR) for each specific starting day, as well as each boat's ability to race in their predicted starting conditions using the ORR handicap system's velocity prediction program.
The goal is to further level the race's corrected-time playing field by effectively removing Mother Nature's majority-share vote in how long it takes each starting fleet to escape the bight and launch into the steadier offshore trade winds.
"I'm hopeful that it will give a boat like ours, on a start that's looking iffy, a good chance of playing with the boats that had a really good start Tuesday and were able to get out into the synoptics," said Max Roth, who's raced Transpac before and is skippering T/S Cal Maritime—Oaxaca, a Santa Cruz 50 crewed by college students, recent college grads and one coach. "I think the F-TCF system could make the racing a little fairer. As we've all seen in races, especially pursuit races, we're never all sailing in the same breeze."
Roth, whose team started racing today, isn't alone in this assessment.
"I think it's a great system," said Rich Festa, owner and co-skipper of Rogers 46 Groundhog Day. Festa noted that—based on his understanding of the F-TCF system, which was used to shadow-score the 2023 Transpac—the winners don't change, but the corrected-time order of second, third and fourth place finishers might vary. "It brings the middle pack in a little bit closer," Festa continued. "You obviously want the favorite start day, but it's totally out of your control. It just evens up the field a bit."
While the pecking order may shuffle using the F-TCF system, the sheer enormity of racing across 2,225 nautical miles remains the same.
Queue the pre-race butterflies.
"If you don't have a little fear of the ocean, then you should not go," said Michael Mollmann, owner and skipper of the Danish-flagged Palby Marine, an Elliot 35SS, and one of four international entries this year. While it's the first Transpac for Mollmann and his Danish crew, he has a lot of confidence in his boat. It's one of the world's quickest 35-foot ocean racers and has previously raced Transpac under different ownership. "If you have confidence in your boat, then you can rest feeling a little bit excited about the coming adventure," Mollmann said.
Confidence is critical in this challenging race, but, for the crew of Heroic Heart, their collectively owned Santa Cruz 52, preparations for today's start began in the 1970s when, as teenagers, the core crew circumnavigated aboard an 85-foot wooden schooner. Since then, Heroic Heart's crew, which includes brothers Steve and Dan Firestone and John and Ron Zamir, plus their lifelong friends, have racked up impressive offshore cruising logs and done a fair bit of buoy racing. The 2025 Transpac, however, will be their first race exceeding 240 nautical miles.
"I think that with any adventure, or anything really worth doing that has risk associated with it, if you're not a little anxious and a little jittery, something's wrong," said Steve Firestone, the team's skipper.
Heroic Heart's offshore racing miles might be limited, but that doesn't mean that this nine-strong crew isn't confident. "We've done all the preparation we needed, and we've done it well," said Dan Firestone, the team's bow person. "The team is really gelled together and we're ready."
This assurance was echoed by Mike Wolfe, Heroic Heart's tactician. "We've been sailing together since 1972, so we have a lot of bluewater sea time," he said. While Wolfe reported some nervous energy in the lead-up to today's start, this changed the day before the start: "I'm not nervous now, I'm just anxious. I can't wait to get out there, chomping at the bit," he said.
Heroic Heart's decades-deep personal ties are further exemplified by the fact that 40 people from three generations of their families watched their start today aboard their 172-foot Perini Navi, which the friends also collectively own, before dropping the throttles to reach Honolulu ahead of the raceboat. "They'll hopefully be on the dock to welcome us in," said Steve Firestone. "It's kind of nice to know they'll be on the same ocean that we're on."
Given the sheer length of this challenging race, perspective is always important.
"I think everybody gets a little too wound up at the start, and it's a long, long race," said Festa, from Groundhog Day. His strategy for staying grounded, he said, involves achieving the right group headspace. "I think it's just getting everybody together and having that Zen moment before we take off," he said, noting that the team's mantra—much like the theme of their namesake film—involves continual improvement. "We're doing the same thing over and over, but we try to do it better each day."
This, of course, begins with the first miles.
"The first 24 hours, we think, are going to be by far the most difficult of the race," said Roth, from T/S Cal Maritime—Oaxaca, noting that he expects his team of friends will heavily leverage their number one genoa and exist on little sleep during this time. "It's a race where you can gain a lot in the light stuff at the start, and it's a race to the synoptics," he said, referring to the stronger offshore winds. "From there, we're looking forward to getting into some breeze, pushing the boat hard and being as competitive as possible."