5 ms·
Female US rower completes historic solo journey from California to Hawaii
- drsalt 4mo agogreat how the article doesn't explain any of the interesting aspects of this
- justinhj 4mo agoThere's a good book "The Pacific Alone" about a guy that did this in a kayak
- yieldcrv 4mo agoWhy do these extreme rowing and sailing boats look so weird Its always a form factor I’ve never seen before Where can I learn more about this scene?
- thephyber 4mo agoIt’s an ocean-going row boat with 2 cabins. Most row boats you’ve seen are probably hyper-light and designed for still water. The model of this boat: https://www.rannochadventure.com/boats-2/r25 https://www.rannochadventure.com/boats-2/r25
- nephihaha 4mo agoBecause there are big waves in the open ocean and people need to sleep?
- yieldcrv 4mo agois that guess or the answer with a question mark?
- jtokoph 4mo agoI always assumed it was because they had storm resistant cabins for sleeping and supply storage. Daily use boats probably don’t need as much in that respect.
- bluGill 4mo agoIt's about a compromise. You need enough space for all the food and whatever other supplies you need on the way. You want enough stability that it's not going to capsize in whatever waves. Remember that a storm could come up. Her boat has solar panels and a navigation system and other things which are certainly nice to have but not required. I would expect she has some sort of radio on board. The Polynesians appeared to have used basically canoes with an outrigger to row across the ocean. I'm not an expert on Polynesians, though, and how they got across the ocean. So if someone is an expert, please correct me.
- ianburrell 4mo agoLater Polynesians used double-hulled voyaging canoes. Calling them canoe is stretching the word since they were large. We would call them catamarans. But can see the progression from outrigger canoes.
- vmg12 4mo agoI used to row and even the tiniest of waves could make it annoying. You'd slide to the front of your seat and try to insert your oar and catch air instead of water. Then if you overcompensated by trying to insert your oar farther in you'd catch a crab (having the oar ripped out of your control). This is on a lake with tiny waves. Rowing across an entire ocean is absolutely amazing.
- herodoturtle 4mo agoFellow rower here, affirming the above. Thought folks would be interested in her boat, built for ocean rowing: https://yourowkelsey.com/about/ https://yourowkelsey.com/about/
- 3eb7988a1663 4mo agoThat page was disappointingly sparse. I wanted pictures of the interior - what does it look like to sleep, how much space when it is fully packed with food, is there any accommodations for the bathroom, or do you just go over the edge, etc.
- herodoturtle 4mo agoHeya, from the page I linked (her boat is named "Lily"): > Lily is a Rannoch R25 built in 2019. More info on Rannoch R25: https://www.rannochadventure.com/boats-2/r25 https://www.rannochadventure.com/boats-2/r25 There are several Youtube videos showing you the interior if you're interested.
- mcpherrinm 4mo agoShe's got a lot of content posted on Instagram and TikTok, which includes packing food, videos of the boat inside and out, etc. https://www.instagram.com/yourowkelsey/reels/ https://www.instagram.com/yourowkelsey/reels/ https://www.tiktok.com/@yourowkelsey https://www.tiktok.com/@yourowkelsey Here's a cabin tour: https://www.tiktok.com/@yourowkelsey/video/7646192036663577870 https://www.tiktok.com/@yourowkelsey/video/76461920366635778...
- 4mo ago
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- CharlesW 4mo agoIt's kind of buried here, but Kelsey is the fastest human to do this. She beat the male record holder's time by 6 days.
- js2 4mo agoIn endurance running, the longer races become, the more competitive they are for women. Women semi-regularly win multi-day and 100+ mile races, even if women don't have course records at these times/distances. In an event of sufficient time/distance, factors besides strength dominate the outcome. So, (and knowing very little about rowing), I am not surprised that a woman could take the record here. You can only row so fast. Other factors like weather, currents, nutrition, mental fortitude, navigation, and boat design overcome muscle strength. All that said: props to Kelsey Pfendler! She definitely knows how to embrace the suck. Here's a nice diary of her trip: https://www.kcra.com/article/kelsey-pfendler-record-breaking-row-california-hawaii-top-moments/71819753 https://www.kcra.com/article/kelsey-pfendler-record-breaking... Love these updates: > Day 21: Kelsey gave an update on a lesson learned about her mental state, saying she had beaten herself up for sleeping in. But she realized that wasn't productive thinking. "When you're out here, you're not in control," she said. "You are in control of you." She said she realized that the way to respond to problems is much more important than the problem itself. > Day 44: Kelsey could see O'ahu as she closed in on her goal. "If any part of this made at least one person feel a little bit more powerful in their own skin, I couldn't ask for anything else and I'm happy," she said. "Think about trying to find your own big, hard, scary thing. You might not think that you are strong enough to finish it right now, but you're definitely strong enough to start it and you'll find everything else along the way."
- stackghost 4mo ago>Other factors like weather, currents I'd be interested to know how much progress she made/lost due to drifting overnight. I feel like that alone would have a drastic impact. It would really suck to check your GPS track in the morning to discover you'd lost a day's progress overnight.
- 4mo ago
- a-uz 4mo agoKārlis Bardelis has rowed the Pacific, India and South Atlantic Oceans and cycled everything in-between. https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2025/11/record-breaking-ocean-explorer-karlis-bardelis-leaves-behind-legacy-of-epic-journeys https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2025/11/record-bre...
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- ChrisArchitect 4mo agoPreviously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48790512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48790512
- mobilemidget 4mo agoAll i think about when people row, kayak or swim these distances in these waters is 'SHARKS'. Which i read and saw enough about that the chances of meeting one isnt that big, but my brain still associates these activities/areas with it.
- echoangle 4mo agoI thought sharks only attack stuff that looks like wounded animals. Would a shark really attack a boat?
- hahahaa 4mo agoThey attack surfcraft. Not sure if they'd go for a bigger vessel though.
- antonymoose 4mo agoDo sharks have a history of attacking small vessels? I’ve had dolphins mess with my kayak over the years so I can believe it.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- ludwigschubert 4mo ago(I was replying to a child comment on fear of deep waters, seemingly deleted?) I’ve heard this sentiment before, and can sort of intellectually follow, but man. I love scuba diving, I love the ocean and its varied and alien and multi-scale inhabitants. I’ve spent weeks on a live-aboard boat explicitly to seek out megafauna like sharks and rays (same subclass as sharks). When I start my descent, I love to turn around and see my exhaled air bubble up, up towards the sun rays in the top layer of the water that slowly fade further away as the pressure on my ears builds and I enter the unknown ocean. It’s the most relaxing feeling, and I often remember it to go to sleep. How beautifully individual our preferences can be. :-)
- openasocket 4mo ago
- ProjectArcturis 4mo agoI wonder what was going on in her life that made her say, "I want to spend the next 43 days rowing alone across the ocean."
- lkjdsklf 4mo agoThis isn’t the first time she’s done it. She spent 41 days making the same trip with 2 other people
- fuzzfactor 4mo agoI admire the ambition which likely preceded the trip over a long enough term to make the conclusive 43-day journey end up as the smaller amount of calendar time. But that which obviously means the most from the standpoint of fulfillment :)
- rr808 4mo agoUsual answer is to get away from the wife (or partner), but she doesn't seem married so I'm baffled...
- bluGill 4mo agoIf you're young and not married, it sounds like a fun trip I'd love to make. I've done various canoe trips through like the Boundary Waters, but I've never been able to take off enough time from work to pull this off. This is one of those cases where getting started is hard, but once you get started you probably can do more if you want it because you get a reputation and people will sponsor you. You end up in a lot of cases your job is to get sponsors for this trip and you live in the meantime cheaply just earn enough money that you can afford to take off a couple months to do these things. That said, it probably isn't all that expensive. You do need to get a canoe, but those are not terribly expensive. You need enough food to last this long. The ideal way is if you're living with your parents or some other situation where you can just stop paying rent while you're on the trip. A large part of living expenses are things that she would not have when she's out on the ocean. Also, if th if this is your goal you're probably living for that so you might be working two jobs to raise money for the trip and then you quit both jobs, take your trip and then you go back to work.
- 4mo ago
- mailship 4mo agokelsey still holds the record btw, but yeahh another runner up is insane
- reenorap 4mo agoI happened upon her via Instagram around day 10 and watched her every day. It was really interesting watching her go through this every day and her authentic posts about what she was feeling. It’s truly great seeing people achieve their goals like this, she is amazing!
- koolba 4mo agoThat’s incredible. What does one eat and drink on a trip like this? The article talks about her cooking. With a fire or one of those little butane stoves? Can a small canoe carry enough water for a trip like this or do you rely on rain water too?
- bluGill 4mo agoI don't know how to verify it, but I've been told that drinking seawater is acceptable to do and is just enough to keep you alive. If I were to do it though, I would invest in some water filters which are fairly cheap and can remove a lot of things that you wouldn't want to be drinking.
- varenc 4mo agoThis is false. Sea water is >3% salt and human kidneys can't produce urine with that much salinity or greater. Since they need more water to extract that much salt, the net effect is dehydration. This rower probably had a desalination machine, or just a big reservoir of fresh water. (Though there might be some obscure edge case, and if you're about to die of dehydration that a little bit of seawater will buy you a minuscule amount of more time? doubt it)
- gpm 4mo agoIf you're about to die of dehydration - and have been rehydrating with fresh water - you'll be low on salt too so a bit of seawater should in principle be in the right direction for both and help. In practice I wonder if your digestive tract might object to the salt water too strongly for this to work though. If you're about to die of dehydration - from sweating - and have not been rehydrating you're already also hypernatremic (too salty) as well so I sort of doubt it would help. Sweat is less salty than your blood so it increases salt concentration.
- throwaway173738 4mo agoIt depends. Hypernatremia refers specifically to sodium but doesn’t speak to potassium or calcium. You need all three in proper balance for your body. So you can sweat a bunch and still need to take in more salts because the balance is off.
- SwellJoe 4mo agoMy first thought on hearing about this was, "what's that boat like? I wanna see the boat." Not to take away from Pfendler's incredible achievement. She's amazing. But, I'm the kind of nerd that immediately went to "surely that is a logistical nightmare, how are you going to carry enough supplies for months at sea in a boat that a human being can propel across the ocean at a decent speed?" It's a bigger boat than I imagined, at 21 feet long and 5.5 feet wide, and 730 pounds. It also has cabins at either end for storage and sleeping. She gives a brief tour of the inside of the boat here: https://www.instagram.com/p/DZBUJ2VJvp_/ https://www.instagram.com/p/DZBUJ2VJvp_/ And, she also discusses some of the technical problems she had in some other videos in the series, like not being able to run her desalination machine because not enough sun and having to dip into her emergency water rations. The athletic side of a thing like this is incredible, but I always want to know the logistics.
- mikelowski 4mo agoShe should've brought sunscreen.
- 3eb7988a1663 4mo agoUntil that video, I was thinking, "Yeah, this would be a really cool thing to do." Then I heard that awful racket of the navigation system bringing constant misery to the entire experience. Also, it was adorable seeing her stuffed animals. Whatever it takes to stay sane over six weeks.
- SwellJoe 4mo agoI would have replaced the stuffed animals with enough insulation to stuff in that compartment to make the autopilot reasonably quiet. That's no way to live for that long. If it were a regular sound, it'd be miserable but at least you'd get used to it, but it's just randomly heaving and wheezing all the time with no rhythm at all. The worst kind of noise.
- MYEUHD 4mo agoHow does a small boat cross the ocean without sinking when waves can be over 30 meters tall[0]? [0]: https://recon.sccf.org/parameters/wave-height https://recon.sccf.org/parameters/wave-height
- clort 4mo agosealed compartments. harness and tether for outside equipment and personnel.
- jjcm 4mo agoI've done open ocean crossings in canoes between the hawaiian islands, so I can answer from experience. Don't think of these waves like the ones you encounter at shore. Open ocean waves are moving mountains. It isn't this: /( It's this: .,-~^^~-,. ___.-/ \-.__
- _doctor_love 4mo agoSeriously credit to you on that ASCII art. I grew up sailing and you captured it beautifully. Well done.
- xyst 4mo agoImpressive feat. I doubt hn readers could last a single week in wilderness let alone a couple months at sea.
- jjcm 4mo agoThis is no joke. I've done the crossing from Moloka‘i to Oahu (~45 miles) in a canoe several times, and those open ocean waves can get very nasty (largest I've dealt with were around 15m tall). I can't imagine the mental endurance required here, let alone the physical. My longest crossing took 9 hours, and I was completely drained by the time I touched shore. 44 days is absolutely insane. Such a huge accomplishment.
- gpm 4mo agoCanoeing 15 meter waves!? I've bailed off of lakes at like 2 foot waves for fear of swamping (admittedly fully laden canoes, but still). Are you just using standard open canoes you'd use on a lake (potentially with some air bladders to keep from swamping?), or something special for this?
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- moab9 4mo agoLarge rolling ocean waves CAN be very gentle, especially compared to lake chop. I've done both in very small craft. Chop is scary.
- Izikiel43 4mo agoNot 15 foot, 15m. 15feet ~ 5m, so 45 feet ~ 15m
- gpm 4mo agoOops, fixed (astonishment that this is doable... intensifies)
- jjcm 4mo agoQuoting this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48875676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48875676 > Don't think of these waves like the ones you encounter at shore. Open ocean waves are moving mountains. > It isn't this: /( > It's this: .,-~^^~-,. ___.-/ \-.__ The canoes are outrigger canoes specifically designed for open ocean wave surfing. They're made to ride these mountains. There are air bladders in the front and the back, and the canoes are easily recoverable when (not if) you flip. This vid shows off the canoes on a small ~4' wave: https://youtu.be/deIpUyBp_6Y?t=251 https://youtu.be/deIpUyBp_6Y?t=251, but the mechanics are the same.
- KellyCriterion 4mo agoHow does it work when she needs to sleep and not loose track?
- jfaat 4mo agoI saw some of her videos on instagram during the journey. There's a rudder that keeps the boat pointed in the right direction without propulsion while she sleeps.
- KellyCriterion 4mo agoBut doesnt it "drift away" if there is no propulsion?
- jfaat 4mo agoThe extent of my expertise here is what I saw in a 30s video. I guess the point is it drifts while pointed in the right direction. That could be closer or further from the goal depending on wind and current but keeps you on track at least.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- norway11 4mo ago[dead]
- wolvoleo 4mo agoI have to watch that. I can't comprehend how someone can live in a canoe for 44 days let alone bring enough supplies to survive.
- dmix 4mo agoNews coverage showing her boat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D5XrFQHCuE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D5XrFQHCuE
- trashface 4mo agoThis rower also has some best-in-class publicists since I have been reading headlines about it for a week
- LastTrain 4mo agoRowing across the Pacific Ocean faster than anyone has ever done it is some pretty good PR on its own!
- plorg 4mo agoIt is interesting to see this comment section be both more upset about a perceived threat to bioessentialist stereotypes and specifically more sexist in assumption than the reddit thread I saw the story in.
- advael 4mo agoAll I'll say is that this is the place on the internet I have seen the largest percentage of people who have an opinion on OOP at all also have that opinion be positive Coincidence? You decide
- hereme888 4mo ago> “Think about trying to find your own big, hard, scary thing. You might not think that you are strong enough to finish it right now, but you’re definitely strong enough to start it, and you’ll find everything else along the way. I’m going to go finish my big, hard scary thing.”
- shalom1112 4mo ago[dead]