Transpac 2025 Update: Who made the right call to get to the breeze?
by David Schmidt / Transpacific Yacht Club 8 Jul 17:54 PDT
July 8, 2025
The crew of Santa Cruz 52 Heroic Heart shared this shot from sea. With nearly every boat racing with Starlink aboard, sailors are sharing heavily on social media and submitting photos and videos directly to the Transpac media team © Heroic Heart
And how technology is changing the race to Hawaii
Boats racing in the 2025 Transpac continue to reel in the offshore miles toward the finish line off Honolulu, Hawaii, in the 53rd edition of this historic 2,225-nautical-mile race. Established in 1906, this year's race began on July 1 with a series of pursuit-style starts over five days. As of today, four boats have retired due to equipment or medical issues; the remaining 49 competitors, ranging in size from 35 to 88 feet, are racing in 10 divisions and for the coveted line honors and fastest elapsed time overall.
Standings at the time of this writing:
- Boatswain's Locker/Yanmar Division 1: Bryon Ehrhart, Lucky
- Mount Gay Division 2: Thomas Akin, Meanie
- Whittier Trust Division 3: Dave Clark, Grand Illusion
- Cal Maritime Division 4: Rich Festa, Groundhog Day
- Cabrillo Boat Shop Division 5: Dave Moore, Westerly
- Garmin Division 6: Thomas Garnier, Reinrag2
- Suntex Division 7: Fred Courouble & Charles-Etieene Devanneaux, Rahan
- Pasha Division 8: Barry Clark, Blackwing
- Bridger Insurance Division 9: Alli Bell, Restless
- smithREgroup Multihull Division 10: Don Wilson, Convexity2
"An upper-level low caused an expanding area of light winds in the subtropical ridge that split the fleet over the last two days," said Chris Bedford, a professional yachting meteorologist and the co-creator of the Marine Weather University, during an interview this afternoon. "This was predicted before the start. A large group of boats went to the south, but another group tried to get ahead of it and didn't quite make it—fortunately, they weren't stuck there too long. Some of the day-one starters didn't see it at all; they were too far ahead. Once boats were west of 135 degrees, they were back in accelerating tradewinds."
The best way to see the dynamics of these shifts continue to play out on the racecourse is to tune into "Transpac Onboard", a new six-episode series transmitted from the middle of the ocean, and to watch the Pasha YB Tracker. Both have fans and friends glued to their screens from afar, with plenty of color in the comments on social media.
The Transpacific Yacht Club has long provided updated race tracking, but this year it changed how frequently the Pasha YB Tracker reports positions and information such as speed and distance traveled, stemming from an AIS rule change by World Sailing and US Sailing. Previous Transpacs employed a four-hour time delay on the tracker. Also, accessing the information from sea was expensive using legacy satellite-communications systems, such as FBB or VSAT. For the 2025 Transpac, the elimination of the time delay and the fact that all but one boat is outfitted with Starlink has meant a much more instantaneous access to real-time information.
To be clear, this isn't the same as live AIS data. For the first 50 miles of the race, the Pasha YB Tracker system pinged every boat once every 15 minutes, then switched to a ping every hour, which it will continue doing until the final 200 miles of the race, when it reverts to pinging every boat every 15 minutes. For the final five miles to Diamond Head, the pings will hit every five minutes. Unlike actual AIS information that's freely available, the information on the Pasha YB Tracker could be as recent as one minute, or as old as 59 minutes, but the information is time-stamped, giving navigators insight into the competition's strategy, tactics and navigation choices.
View the Pasha Live Tracker.
"It has had an effect," said Tom Garnier, owner and skipper of J/125 Reinrag2. Garnier should know: this is Reinrag2's eighth race to Hawaii, and three other J/125s are in the hunt. This latter point matters, as these boats should be capable of relatively similar speeds and sailing angles, provided that their navigators place them in the most advantageous winds.
When asked if the more frequent position updates were motivating his crew to push harder, Garnier was philosophical. "The number one rule in sailing is to be safe," he said, pointing to an inherent tension. "The number two rule is to have fun, and the number three rule is to do our best. But the problem is that if you're not doing your best, you're not having fun."
The solution, he said, involves a Reinrag2 mantra. "We accelerate to the finish, which means that we get better each day," Garnier said, via a sat-phone call at sea.
In addition to the Pasha live race tracker, the Nautical Cloud scoring system in use this year has a Time Sector Analysis feature. Five transit points have been set by race officials—West End of Catalina, Halfway Point, 500nm from the finish, 100nm from the finish and Molokai Channel. Each of these points has a radius and the system monitors each boat's time spent in that sector of the race. "The transit point is like another finish line. As boats cross that virtual finish line, you can see how they performed, and the green and red triangles indicate going up and down within your division," said Tom Trujillo, Transpac's PRO. It's another fun way to track the race, broken down into key sectors.
To the first transit point, Catalina Island, the top three boats on corrected time were Mike Sudo's Macondo, Michael Marion's Insoumise and Alli Bell's Restless. Now, as the fleet is closing in on the race's Halfway Point, fortunes have flipped, with Restless leading over Fred Courouble and Charles Devanneaux's Rahan and Macondo, with Insoumise slipping down to 8th.
Check out the sector time analysis here.
Samantha Gebb is skippering her first Transpac aboard Zimmer, her father's Pacer 42, currently 4th in Suntex Division 7. She said her team has been using the Pasha YB Tracker data as a kind of electronic telltale. "We looked at the weather and were expecting a header to come down, and we were using the hourly YB information to see if that header hit the boats north of us first so that we could be prepared for it," Gebb said via a Starlink call at sea.
"It's interesting to be able to use the other boats on the course that are five to 40 miles away from us to see what the wind is doing," Gebb continued. "And that influences our decision on whether we keep going straight or make a right or a left-hand turn."
While this is Gebb's second Transpac and her first as skipper, she is a third-generation Transpac sailor, following in the wake of her grandfather and father, the latter of whom is crewing for her this year. Zimmer is the only Pacer 42 in this year's Transpac, but Gebb is by no means the only female skipper, with over 10 percent of the starting fleet commanded by women.
"I'm really excited about the number of women skippers," said Alli Bell, skipper and owner of Cal 40 Restless. She also serves as Transpacific Yacht Club's Rear Commodore and Communications Chair, as well as Vice Commodore of San Diego Yacht Club, and said this evolution of more women skippers happened organically. "We didn't do anything specifically to attract more women— we just try to attract sailors."
Bell and Gebb—along with Heather Furey, skipper of Santa Cruz 70 Mirage, currently sitting in 6th place in Whittier Trust Division 3—are also competing for the Storm Trysail Team Trophy. This race-within-a-race is awarded to the top-scoring three-boat team. Their team, "The Vixens," is competing against seven other three-boat teams for this prestigious award.
"We're cheering her on, live, as we go," said Furey, describing how her Mirage teammates have been following Zimmer's performance on the Pasha YB Tracker via their Starlink. "And of course, Alli's performance is fantastic and so exciting."
Furey, who is a professional project manager ashore, said that while this is technically her third time skippering in Transpac, and her third Transpac overall, this is the first time she finally feels like a skipper. "Some of my mentors were very generous the first two times," she said, and that distinguishes this year's race from her other two trips across the Pacific.
When asked about her leadership style, Furey was clear that authenticity is key. "I consider myself a servant leader, and I try to talk the talk and walk the walk," she said, an approach that translates well from her office to her sled. "I frequently have crew tell me that I'm an owner and I'm not supposed to do that," she said. "And I just smile and say, this is what we do together here."
As for what the number of women skippers in the 2025 Transpac Race might portend for the race's future, Bell described a conversation between one of her crew and his daughter. "His daughter says, 'So wait, Alli's like the boss?'" Bell said. "And he says, 'yep'. And she goes, 'So like the boss of you?' And he goes, 'yep'. And she's like, 'Oh, that's so cool. I could do that someday.'"
This future looks as bright as Hawaiian sunshine.
Not as bright is the unfortunate news that four boats have retired from racing—not uncommon given the sheer breadth of the challenge, with four being the average number of retired boats over the past five editions of the race.
Here is the latest on the retired boats:
On Saturday, July 5, at approximately 1800 PDT, the Transpac Race Committee received notification from GoodEnergy, George Hershman's Reichel/Pugh 63, that they were forced to retire due to rudder-bearing issues. That same day at 2134 PDT, Race Committee received notice from Rock n' Roll, John Sangmeister and Justin Smart's Andrews 68 Rock n Roll, that a crewmember had sustained a fall and was taken to Catalina Island for treatment before being transferred to a mainland hospital. On Sunday, July 6, at 1545 PDT, the Race Committee received a call from Ragtime, Tina Robert's Spencer 65, that the team was retiring from the race. A crewmember was evacuated from the vessel due to a medical issue, approximately 230 miles offshore in a coordinated operation involving the U.S. Coast Guard and the US Air Force. The sailor was airlifted to Scripps Memorial Hospital in San Diego, where they were treated and subsequently released. They are doing well, and Ragtime has safely returned to the mainland.
The 2025 Transpac Race Committee would like to acknowledge the efforts of these crews and owners. Just getting to the starting line of this race is a major accomplishment, and we hope to see these boats and sailors return to the starting line in 2027.
Find out more at www.transpacyc.com