Bryan Ehrhart's 88-foot maxi Lucky has rewritten the Sydney to Auckland Ocean Race record books, completing the trans-Tasman crossing in less than half the time of the previous mark.
The 2025 Sydney to Auckland Ocean Race will be talked about for years. It was the year a single boat showed just how quickly the Tasman Sea can be crossed when the right vessel, crew, and conditions come together. The Juan K-designed Lucky, with American owner Bryan Ehrhart at the helm and New Zealand sailing icon Brad Butterworth on tactics, claimed line honours in a confirmed time of 2 days 20 hours 27 minutes and 7 seconds. The finish time was earlier reported as a yet to be officially confirmed time of 2 days 20 hours 26 minutes and 28 seconds.
To appreciate the size of that achievement, consider what Lucky was chasing down. The previous record of 5 days, 3 hours, 37 minutes and 57 seconds had been set in 2023 by Geoff Hill's Antipodes, a time that had looked formidable against most offshore campaigns. Lucky didn't chip away at it. She rendered it obsolete.
Before she bore the name Lucky, this 88-footer competed as Rambler 88, accumulating one of the most decorated track records in modern offshore sailing. Her Juan K pedigree speaks to pure performance engineering, and the results she has delivered in the past year alone back that up. In January 2025, she crossed the Atlantic to set a new RORC Transatlantic Race monohull record of 7 days, 20 hours, 34 minutes and 41 seconds, bettering Comanche's 2022 benchmark by an hour and 25 minutes. She then took monohull line honours at the Caribbean 600 before heading to the Pacific, where she claimed the Barn Door Trophy at the Transpac Race with the fastest elapsed time in that event's history: 5 days, 21 hours, 23 minutes, and 49 seconds.
Arriving at the Sydney to Auckland Ocean Race off the back of that campaign, Lucky and her crew were a machine running at full confidence. The Tasman served up its full range of moods, fronts and squalls alongside calmer patches, and the boat absorbed it all without missing a beat.
Brad Butterworth's presence aboard added another dimension entirely. His name runs through the history of elite sailing, from America's Cup victories to Whitbread Around the World campaigns and decades of top-level international competition. Reading the Tasman's shifting weather systems and knowing when to push and when to hold back are precisely the skills that separate good campaigns from historic ones. Butterworth provided exactly that through the middle stages of the crossing, keeping the crew committed without overreaching.
Speaking at the finish, he reflected on what had made the campaign click:
"Bryan's assembled a world-class team and given us a boat that rewards commitment. The Tasman gave us everything, fronts, squalls, calm patches, and the boat just kept charging. It was one of those rare races where everything came together."
Chicago-based Ehrhart has spent the past decade building a lineage of boats named Lucky, progressing from club racing through to competing at the highest levels of global offshore sailing. Each step has been guided by the same philosophy: finding the right balance between speed, seamanship, and meaningful challenge. Bringing Lucky to New Zealand after her Transpac triumph was a logical extension of a year in which the crew crossed half the planet and finished at the front of every fleet they entered. Ehrhart called the Auckland finish "an emotional high point", praised the local welcome the boat and crew received, and hinted that a return to the race in future editions was very much on his mind.
For the race's organisers, this performance adds a new chapter for the still-young Sydney to Auckland Ocean Race, founded by the Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club and Royal Akarana Yacht Club in 2023, conceived as a modern trans-Tasman classic connecting two great yachting nations. Antipodes gave the event its credibility in that first running. Lucky has now given it an entirely different kind of profile, the sort that puts a race on the radar of every serious offshore campaign looking for a new frontier.
A record halved in just the second edition of a race is not merely a statistical curiosity. It signals that the Sydney to Auckland Ocean Race has the course, the conditions, and the competitive structure to attract the world's best. Ehrhart and Butterworth's achievement belongs to them and their crew, but it also belongs to the race itself.
Butterworth summed it up simply: "The Tasman's a wild stretch of water. To cross it this fast, safely, and in that kind of style, well, that's something special."
