The denser the fiberglass ceiling, the more force is needed to demolish it.

In the case of the biennial Transpacific Yacht Race (established 1906), this force had been gathering for 72 years before Alli Bell became the first woman skipper to win this 2,225-nautical-mile race aboard Restless, her Cal 40, this year.

It began in 1953 when Willard Bell—Alli’s grandfather—first skippered Westward Ho, his Lyle Hess-designed 36-foot sloop, in Transpac. Bell returned in 1959 with Westward Ho and a crew that included his wife, Inez, before upgrading to Westward, his Lapworth 50, which he first raced in the 1965 Transpac alongside sons Charles (Alli’s dad) and Sam.

Over the years, Willard Bell skippered all five of his children—three boys and two girls—to Transpac’s iconic finishing line off Diamond Head aboard Westward.

“I don’t remember a time that Transpac wasn’t a big deal in my life,” Alli Bell says.

While Transpac and Westward, which is still in the family, dominate Bell family lore, Alli Bell’s lifelong dream was to own a Cal 40. “And the obvious thing to do with a Cal 40,” she says, “is to go race Transpac.”

Becoming the first woman skipper in Transpac’s 119-year history to win corrected-time honors and the King Kalakaua Trophy, however, was the result of great preparation, rock-solid leadership, outstanding crew work, and that most fickle of offshore currencies: Luck.

Plus, adds Bell, perhaps some ethereal VMG. But that’s premature storytelling. 

Alli Bell’s first of five Transpacs unfurled in 2013, when uncles Sam and Willie decided that Westward needed to fetch Diamond Head again. Westward’s 2013 crew included cousins Mara, Jon, and Graham, the latter of whom navigated Restless to its 2025 win.

Westward finished the 2013 Transpac third in its class and ninth overall, notching a high-water mark for the sailing Bells.

But that’s only half of Restless’s lineage.

Enter Stephen Driscoll, Bell’s husband and a lifelong sailor with his own Transpac heritage: Clem Stose, Driscoll’s great-grandfather, won the 1928 Transpac aboard Teva, his W. Starling Burgess-designed 56-foot centerboard yawl, before earning the race’s Barn Door trophy (read: fastest elapsed time of any competing monohull) as the captain of Vileehi, H.T. Horton’s Edson B. Schock-designed 80-foot auxiliary ketch, in 1934.

Bell, who is the Transpacific YC’s Rear Commodore and the San Diego YC’s Vice Commodore, fulfilled her first dream in 2019 when she purchased Restless, a 1967 Cal 40.

Bell’s first call was to cousin Graham, requesting his navigational services. Eric Heim (a professional sailmaker who raced off the clock), Driscoll (who was still solidifying his position with his then-girlfriend, now wife), and cousin Mara also got calls. Bell’s friend Greg Reynolds was a later recruit.

First, however, Restless needed love.

While the boat sailed the 1975 Transpac and came with solid bones, it wasn’t race ready. The hull-to-deck joint needed attention, its undercarriage had osmosis blisters, and its mast failed its survey. Moss adorned the toe rails, the cruising sails were just that, and the belowdeck spaces were dark.

“The first thing I did when I bought the boat was clean up the toe rails, which resulted in a lot of leaking because I dislodged all the caulking,” recalls Bell. “I knew I had to take it to the yard to glass over the deck-hull joint, which is a common fix on Cal 40s.”

Restless was hauled from the brine, revealing her undercarriage sores. The deck carried a railroad yard’s worth of headsail track that Bell wanted to remove for (eventual) cruises to Catalina, but which necessitated all-new non-skid. And since teak was already on order, the cockpit combing needed refreshing.

Belowdecks, Bell and company rewired everything, revamped the engine (more, later), installed a new head and plumbing, fitted a watermaker and a new stove, and revitalized all brightwork. “We did pretty much everything down below,” says Bell, explaining that Driscoll Boat Works handled the blisters, the hull-to-deck joint, the track removal, the non-skid job, and all painting.

Fortune smiled on Restless when Bell found a Cal 40 owner who was divesting his sail inventory. “He had only used the main twice,” says Bell, adding that she also purchased other racing sails from this owner.

Other sails, like the team’s heavy J1, came from an Ericson 35, while the J3 had existed in a state of uncompletion for years. Both were recut for Restless.

“It was a lot of piecing things together,” Bell says. But for the record: “Secondhand doesn’t have to mean ratty,” she says, noting that she also bought a brand-new genoa and a No. 2 spinnaker.

Restless’s used mast was gifted by Don Jesberg, a fellow Cal 40 owner who had recently outfitted his whip with a brand-new stick.

All up, Bell, who is a higher-education policy analyst, estimates that she spent somewhere in the high five figures or very low six figures preparing Restless for the 2025 Transpac, and for other cruising adventures. “I haven’t done the math,” she says. “But there’s no way it was much more than that, because I don’t have those kinds of resources.”

But it was the engine, of all things, that almost soured everything.

The team fitted a new high-output alternator, but this required sending some pulleys to a shop in eastern Canada for servicing. They were due back in SoCal in March; instead, they arrived in late May. “Another few days and we wouldn’t have been able to go,” says Bell, noting the ridiculousness of having an engine threaten a sailboat race. “The irony of that wasn’t lost.”

Another windshift arrived a week before the start when cousin Mara broke two ribs. Restless’s six-person crew became a five-person operation. 

“We were disappointed, but we dealt with it,” says Bell, explaining that the team adjusted their watch schedule accordingly.

So how did Restless outsail 52 other starting yachts, many of which benefited from much newer hull designs, professional crews, and brand-new sail inventories?

“Luck,” says Bell. “We were lucky that the weather pattern worked out that we could just point the bow at Honolulu and go.”

Some backstory: Transpac uses a pursuit-style start, with teams starting on July 1, 3, and 5. While there’s no question that the first wave of starters enjoyed the best breeze out of the gate, the race’s Forecast Time Correction Factor scoring—which is also used in the Newport Bermuda Race—levels this playing field.

Restless’s starting date put the team to the west of an upper-level low that created an expansive area of light winds. But even so, Restless was only one of 15 monohulls that shared that meteorological good fortune.

When pressed on this latter point, two fundamental truths of offshore sailing emerged.

“Preparation, number one,” says Bell. “Number two, crew work.”

Still, it wasn’t all VMG running: On July 7, the team learned that Donald Wyatt, Driscoll’s uncle and a three-time Transpac veteran, had passed away. 

“We got to thinking a lot about what it means to be doing what we were doing,” Bell says of retracing sea miles previously plied by family members and friends who had crossed life’s final bar. “I like to think that their spirits kept us on,” she says. “I just think there was something propelling us that was more than just the boat.”

Intervening angels aside, there’s no question that great sailing was the team’s driving force.

Sure, there was a squall with a 27-knot stinger that overwhelmed the number of wraps holding the spinnaker guy around its winch drum, but—aside from this small SNAFU—the team otherwise focused on smart navigation, fast driving, and attentive sail trimming.

Restless crossed the finishing line at 2223 on Sunday, July 13, posting an elapsed time of 12 days, 12 hours, 3 minutes, and 16 seconds. They were met at the dock by more than 100 family members, friends, and fellow competitors—by far the largest welcoming party enjoyed by any 2025 finisher.

While this boiled down to a corrected time of 8 days, 12 hours, five minutes, and 49 seconds, which put the King Kalakaua Trophy within reach, the team had to endure days of uncertainty as protests (none of which involved Restless) wended through the protest channels.

“It was a little bit nerve-racking, and it definitely set into my imposter syndrome,” recalls Bell. “You sort of wait for the other shoe to drop, right?”

Instead of shoes, 119 years’ worth of (fiber)glass ceiling tumbled when Restless was declared the overall winner.

“This should be an inspiration, and not just to women,” says Bill Guilfoyle, commodore of the Transpacific Yacht Club. “It should be an inspiration to anyone who wants to compete knowing that any boat that’s well-prepared and well-sailed has the opportunity to win this race.”

It also shows that Transpac’s future is as bright as the noonday sun so long as there are dreamers and doers keen to take on this trans-Pacific challenge. When queried about the implications of her success, Bell, in her characteristic low-key style, downplayed her achievement.

“I don’t think I’m anything special,” she says. “I’m someone who wanted to do something and did it.”

While that may be true, there’s also something to be said about those in the family who had a hand in her destiny. They’d be right proud of her commitment and preparation, and not the least bit surprised by the result.

The post A Restless Transpac Chapter appeared first on Sailing World.

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 YC with three pursuit-style starts so that all finishers can arrive in Honolulu at a steady pace over several days. As of press time (July 13), 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.

Doublehanded Crew Set a Impressive Transpac Benchmark

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 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 nine 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.

“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.”

The post A Transpac Race For Keeps appeared first on Sailing World.

In the morning reports, boats in the lead group reported Northeast winds 15-20 knots, with higher gusts in squalls, and good progress being made to Hawaii, even if they are looking for some sun. Paul Stemler’s J/44 Patriot continues to lead Division 7 and the fleet overall, while Ron Simonson’s SO44 Sleeper is leading Division 8.

Joel Young’s Beneteau 523 Transformer reported “the last 24 hours is characterized by an endless platoon of squalls and light rain showers marching steadily across our course. When does the foulies-free weather pattern begin?”

The mood on Kevin Rooney’s Santa Cruz 40 Kokopelli was a little better, helped by good food. The team said “We have been eating well, with Mary’s Turkey Chili a couple of nights ago. Before that, Gordon caught a yellowtail and we gorged. Last night was a tasty dorado.”

In the middle group the wind was much further aft, and much lighter. Eric Gray’s Santa Cruz 50 Allure is leading Division 5, sailing close to rhumb line, and reported 10 knots at 070°. Greg Slyngstad’s J/125 Hamachi is also VMG downwind sailing with a position further north, and is leading Division 4.

In the group that started yesterday, there seems to be distinct differences in strategy: a group lead by Syd Fisher’s Ragamuffin 100 is heading north, while Wild Oats is leading a group going down the middle, with no one appearing to choose a southerly route…yet. This group also has the breeze aft, with mediocre pressure overnight, but improving later in the day.

Eduardo Saenz’s TP 52 Detroyer reported 11 knots at 033° and an “uneventful night…except for the giant kelp island we hit and the half hour it took to get it all off the boat.”

But the pressure got better later, with Wild Oats navigator Nick White reporting “Right now we’re averaging around 19 knots and aiming straight at the Barn Door – Hawaii. It’s fantastic downwind sailing. You couldn’t ask for much better…except we’d like some sunshine instead of heavy cloud.

“As it turned out, the forecasts proved to be completely unreliable,” White said. “We had to ignore them and do our own thing in the conditions we were experiencing at the time. It was really tough tactically, especially when we were trying to get around Santa Catalina Island and out to sea.”

More challenges lie ahead as navigators like White wrestle with the weather models and the realities on the course.

All boats have GPS trackers provided by Yellowbrick, where the boat’s position, speed and heading will be continuously reported on the Yellowbrick website, with a 6 hour delay in the reports viewable here.

The post TransPac Update appeared first on Sailing World.

After just 3 days 8 hours and 9 seconds, Lending Club 2 arrived in Hawaii, unofficially taking a full 24 hours off of the previous record, set by a similar maxi-tri, Geronimo, in 2005. At an average speed of 24.61 knots, the crew made about 590 nm a day, a speed that they feel could have been improved upon had they had to spend less time searching for ocean debris to avoid. The Lending Club team knows these perils well, as their previous record setting attempt at the TransPac in 2012 was hindered by almost 10 hours due to damage caused by impacts with debris.

The crew is currently waiting for ratification by the World Sailing Speed Record Council, but there is no doubt that the official time will have broken the standing record by a significant margin.

The post Lending Club 2 Shatters TransPac Record appeared first on Sailing World.

Follow along with the record breaking attempt on the Yellowbrick tracker, and keep up with updates from the Lending Club Facebook page.

The post Lending Club 2: Day 2 Transpac Attempt appeared first on Sailing World.

Video from Division 4,5 & 6 Starts

The post Transpac 2015 First & Second Start appeared first on Sailing World.