Guy Chester crossed the finish line at Gold Coast Seaway aboard the trimaran Oceans Tribute at 19:15 on Friday evening to claim line honours in the Solo Trans-Tasman Yacht Challenge 2026, completing the passage in 6 days, 7 hours and 34 minutes and 36 seconds.
Chester, with many years of experience as an offshore solo sailor, described the crossing in blunt terms moments before finishing.
“This has been the most arduous ocean crossing/passage I’ve done in any boat,” he said.
“Crewed and uncrewed. The most arduous. Violent squalls, violent storms, terrible sea states, challenging weather decisions.
“It’s a fantastic achievement to have refitted the boat, got it ready to do this race, sailed it well, and get there first. Everybody says I’ve got a fast multihull, but they tip over and they can break. I’ve had to really look after her.”
Ocean’s Tribute is a high-performance trimaran that has completed two circumnavigations, logging more than 45,000 nautical miles under Chester’s command. He bought the boat and brought it back to New Zealand for a substantial refit ahead of the Challenge, describing the support he received from the local marine industry and from the Opua Cruising Club as one of the highlights of the whole campaign.
The passage was dominated by heavy weather from the first night out of the Bay of Islands. Chester reported running off in 50-knot gusts in the dark, dropping the mainsail and staysail and eventually sailing under bare poles until conditions eased. Two further bursts of 45-knot wind followed in the same night. The sea state was so violent that for two separate 24-hour periods he was unable to cook, surviving on apples, cheese, and muesli bars.
“I’ve never had a situation in 45,000 miles around the world where I couldn’t cook,” he said. “I’m talking about cutting up onions and garlic and putting them in a frying pan. I couldn’t even boil the kettle.”
His navigation strategy drew on detailed weather modelling through PredictWind, tracking multiple forecast models and comparing their agreement to time his course deviations. He went considerably further south and then north than the direct track demanded, adding miles to stay in the wind and hit the right angles as each weather system evolved. His final distance sailed was 1459 nautical miles, well ahead of any other competitor (to date.)
“I relied very much on the modelling of PredictWind,” he said. “Using the different models, looking at when they agreed, looking at when there was variability, and looking at the detailed outputs and routing. That’s how you make those decisions to go 50 miles off course to be better in 12 hours.”
Chester spent time ahead of the race working with PredictWind to tune his boat’s polar measurements so the routing algorithm would produce clean, usable results for a vessel he knows intimately after four years and tens of thousands of ocean miles together.
He crossed the finish with Vixen Racing, the Verdier 40 skippered by Sharon Ferris-Choat, chasing in second on line honours, with James Foster’s Mumbay 48 catamaran Electron and and Malcolm Dickson’s 55-foot Sarau also among the front runners.
For Chester, the line honours finish marks what he called “the penultimate” achievement of a sailing career.
“Been sailing for 60-odd years,” he said, just before signing off to make the finish. “This is it.”
Results are provisional.
