Earning the mai tais and palm trees

The 53-boat fleet began the 2025 Transpac Race with staggered starts on July 1, July 3 and July 5 for the 53rd edition of the biennial 2225 nm crossing from Los Angeles to Honolulu.  Most of the fleet has finished, and while event organizers have not yet confirmed winners (too many mai tais?), the online results have Alli Bell’s Cal 40 Restless as the overall champion.

While Restless needed 12d 12:03:16 to cover the course, Bryon Ehrhart’s 88-foot Juan Kouyoumdjian-designed maxi Lucky (former Rambler 88) needed just 5 days, 21 hours, 23 minutes and 49 seconds to claim elapsed time honors. 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. “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. “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 broke 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.

“This is a water desert that’s as beautiful as any other desert you’ll see. You finally see a piece of land. And when you see it, you’ve got Diamond Head.”

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. “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.”

Their elapsed time was 10d 09:55:14. The price for this fun? “Your lack of sleep,” said Courouble. “You start to hallucinate.”

Event information – Race details – Results – Tracker

Source: TYC