News
Kimo Winterbottom of Bridger Marine Insurance will be presenting the next Transpac Prep Seminar on Wednesday, October 28 at 6:00pm. He's a veteran Transpac competitor who knows the issues offshore racers face and is prepared to cover the following topics:
Current insurance market for racing yachts;
How to prepare your boat and team for the insurance survey and underwriting;
Insurance options available for the 2027 Transpac.
Check out the latest from Transpacific Yacht Club highlighting updates on the F-TCF rating review, a video replay of the rigging seminar hosted by David Servais of SD Boatworks, and a story from Transpac skipper Kimo Winterbottom. This newsletter also provides a Transpac Checklist feature, key info for the 2027 race and upcoming important dates.
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Kimo Winterbottom’s obsession is to win Transpac. Safely.
Kimo Winterbottom has sailed all his life—at times at the highest levels of the sport. Olympic trials in the Soling, three times in the J/24 Worlds, racing the Maxi circuit in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, Australia and San Francisco Bay. But it wasn’t until his father passed away in 2023 that his compass needle pointed offshore.
“Frankly, I was terrified of bluewater sailing when I was growing up,” he says. But his dad was really into it, crossing the Pacific 15 times in various campaigns. His father’s passing inspired Winterbottom to buy an Andrews 56 and sign up for his first offshore race—the 2024 Pac Cup. As Halawa crossed the finish line, he and his brothers, Michael and Jesse Winterbottom, spread their father’s ashes in a tribute to the legacy of bluewater sailing he’d newly inspired in them.
In what his dad may find an even more fitting tribute: “I now have an obsession to win Transpac,” says Winterbottom. After two Pac Cups and the 2025 Transpac, as he looks ahead to the 2027 race, his goal is clear: “I’m looking to win.”
Read moreWatch the Transpac Prep Seminar with David Servais of SD Boatworks
On July 17, Transpac hosted a seminar with industry expert and Transpac sponsor SD Boatworks, covering rigging issues and ideas to consider as you prepare for the 2027 race. Is your current rigging set up adequate? What new products and technologies are available today? What’s being used by top level race boats? David Servais of SD Boatworks covered topics such as the latest concepts for offshore race rigging, soft shackles and more; lifespan and inspection schedules for running and standing rigging; how many spare sheets, halyards and fittings is enough; and checking for and dealing with chafing.
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!Aloha! Competitors in the Transpac Race have always ranged in boat size and inherent speed, with overall results calculated on “corrected time” by a handicapping system. TPYC’s history of developing custom handicaps for the race dates back over 50 years and continues Transpac’s goal of fairness for the various boat types, sizes and speeds so the winners are the best sailed, best prepared boats. In 2025, this led Transpac to adopt Forecast Time Correction Factor (F-TCF) scoring to better incorporate the most likely weather for each race, as well as each boat’s measured performance characteristics.
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The latest Transpac Seminar via Zoom is Tuesday July 17, presented by SD Boatworks on Race Rigging.
Also, read about more upcoming seminars, a book about the Transpac Race, how to enter the 2027 race and where to find crew posting.
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If we can look back now to a milestone, classic Transpac—say 1973, introducing ultralights—and if we are able to dig into the details of other races too, it’s through the labors of one man: Jack Smock. Against the odds, Transpac has Smock’s authoritative history of the formative years.
Jack was neither a big sailor, nor a big Transpac guy. He never sailed the race. He was, however, willing to take on a major piece of work in his retirement, at the behest of a friend and, like most things Transpac, pull it off as a volunteer, never counting the hours. Smock was an advertising man. Our urban legends have it that he put Union Oil on the map as the first company to speak out about the role and responsibilities of business. Thanks to him—fact, not legend—a whole lot of 1950-60s automobiles cruised around America with little orange balls on their radio antennas. Every car used to have a radio antenna, son, and those “antenna toppers” now appear online as vintage collectibles. In the day, they provided free advertising for Union Oil stations that announced themselves full-sized.
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Please join us Tuesday evening, July 21 at 6PM PST via Zoom for our next Transpac Seminar. No registration required.
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87648304328?pwd=2VJk2CV2OEbBpd17VzvvQUI7xDM16e.1
Meeting ID: 876 4830 4328
Passcode: 687422
David Servais - SD Boatworks
Please join us for an informative and valuable evening to learn from an industry expert and Transpac sponsor on how to make sure your current rigging set up is adequate and what new products and technologies are available and being used by top level teams.
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