Seven days at sea. A single emergency blanket. A bar of chocolate. And, with 21 miles still to run, a mind already mapping out what she would do differently next time.
At 12:15pm NZST on Saturday 6 June 2026, Sharon Ferris-Choat brought Vixen Racing across the finish line at Southport, completing the 2026 Solo Trans-Tasman Yacht Challenge in 7 days 0 hours 9 minutes and 4 seconds. Second boat home overall. First monohull to finish. The only woman to start the race, and the first woman to finish it since 2014.
The dock was nowhere near in sight when she had already begun thinking about coming back.
When the fleet left Opua on 30 May, Ferris-Choat became just the seventh woman in the Solo Trans-Tasman's 56-year history to line up. She arrived as arguably the most decorated competitor in the fleet. Her record encompasses two Olympic campaigns, a Jules Verne Challenge attempt that ended with a dismasting in the Southern Ocean, and a 2005 ORYX Quest victory in which she and her crew joined Karine Fauconnier to become the first women to win a round-the-world race outright. More than 124,000 offshore racing miles were already behind her before Vixen Racing reached the start line.
Her stated aim was measured. "The goal is to get there safely and competitively. The result will be what it will be."
The weather waiting for the fleet made measured sound wishful. Two significant low-pressure systems lay directly in their path: one timed to strike as boats rounded the top of New Zealand, the second tracking from Tasmania to intercept the fleet mid-crossing. PredictWind was forecasting gusts of 35 to 40 knots through the first front's passage, potentially higher in squalls. Ferris-Choat did not dress it up. "They're boat-breaking, they're human-breaking, and they could end your race very, very quickly."
Asked in the days before the start whether she would genuinely commit to leaving, her answer said something about who she is. "I always have a saying as a mother. If what I'm about to do has a potential to create motherless children, and if that's even entering my head, we need to have a serious look at the responsibility of what we're about to do. We're not there."
On Saturday, she was on the start line.
The run around North Cape on day one was punishing across much of the fleet, and she pushed through it. Overnight on day two her J2 wrapped around the forestay in 40-knot conditions. She cleared it and pressed on. Day three brought a rough night of thunderstorms and squalls, and then, from the cockpit at sunrise, she sent back a video. "What a contrast to last night." By that point she was among the first three boats to reach the halfway mark, alongside Guy Chester's trimaran Oceans Tribute and James Foster's catamaran Electron. A good lift let her tack toward Lord Howe Island. She told her followers the moon had come out.
The handicap contest gave no one any comfort for long. Malcolm Dickson's 55-foot Sarau led on PHRF corrected time for much of the crossing, with Vixen Racing trading the position back and forth as conditions shifted. At times no more than three minutes separated them after days at sea. Ferris-Choat gradually pulled away toward the finish, and when she crossed the line she held first place on PHRF corrected time with 6 days 14 hours 13 minutes and 49 seconds, the rest of the fleet still making its way in.
The nights were relentless. On day five a squall arrived without any warning. She was below, Vixen Racing doing 12 knots with one reef and the J2 up. "The next thing I know we've got 47 knots and torrential rain and the only thing I could do was bear away." She sorted it. The tow line had deployed itself at some point during the chaos. She cleaned that up too. Then, at 4am on another of the hard nights, she filmed from the cockpit: hail the size of golf balls, lightning sitting on the horizon, 40-knot squalls rolling through one after another. "This has been punishing. And these are our mates back there in the rest of the fleet — we hope everybody's OK."
In the middle of one of her hardest nights on the water, her first thought was for the sailors behind her.
The final approach delivered one more brutal stretch. Wind tumbling off the mountains, temperatures she described as almost the coldest sailing of her life. With 21 miles left she recorded what turned out to be her last transmission before the dock. "Under here I've got an emergency blanket wrapped around me just to try and give me some insulation from the dampness and everything's icicles; it's just crazy." She had already worked out what she would change next time.
She crossed at 12:15pm NZST on 6 June 2026. Elapsed time: 7 days 0 hours 9 minutes and 4 seconds. PHRF corrected time: 6 days 14 hours 37 minutes and 25 seconds. Second overall. First monohull. First woman to finish in twelve years.
