When Kelsey Pfendler pushed off from California, she hoped to reach Hawaii in under 70 days. Her solo row across the mid-Pacific over the next 44 days shattered speed records and her own expectations.
“Bodies are amazing, and I do believe that women are really good at endurance sports. We’re super capable of dealing with pain and emotional regulation under stress. Just what a body can do—we don’t even know,” Pfendler told ESPN in an interview reflecting on her trip.
Pfendler, a 32-year-old Grand Canyon river guide, is now the fastest person to complete a solo row across the mid-Pacific and the first American woman to do so.
The journey
Pfendler began the roughly 2,400-mile (3,862-kilometer) trip on May 21 in Monterey, California, and finished in Honolulu, Hawaii, 43 days, 17 hours and 55 minutes later.
“I didn’t expect to get in that early, but I picked up a lot of speed at the very end because there was some good current going into Honolulu,” she told ABC News after the trip.
Pfendler beat the previous women’s record by over 40 days and the men’s record by about nine days. She is now the 10th person to have rowed solo and unsupported across the mid-Pacific.
“It’s a crazy feeling to have this moment when I didn’t even expect fully to break the women’s record coming out here. I just wanted to do my best. And I trained my butt off and I prepared in every way I could, but I had no expectations of this moment,” Pfendler shared in a Facebook video the day before she made history.
While she made the journey completely alone, carrying everything she needed with her in her 21-foot (6.5-meter) boat, hundreds of thousands of people followed along on social media where Pfendler posted videos documenting her struggles, success and daily routines.
Pfendler says the first week of the trip was the most difficult. As boats leave the coast of California, they battle wind and currents pushing them south or back toward shore until they clear the continental shelf. To avoid losing ground, Pfendler slept for just one hour each day during her first week and a half. She slept for only four hours each day for the rest of the trip.
“The utter lack of sleep that I was able to function on was pretty interesting to me. I didn’t know how that was all going to go,” she told ESPN.
Beyond sleep deprivation, Pfendler battled changing weather, wind, fear, self-doubt and isolation. For the vast majority of her trip, Pfendler was out of reach of a helicopter rescue, meaning she would have to wait on a much-slower boat rescue if anything went wrong.
”You have to have this sense of humility when you’re getting faced with such a powerful thing like the ocean. It was scary, it was amazing, it was humbling. It was everything that it could be,” Pfendler told ESPN.
The motivation
In 2024, Pfendler rowed across the mid-Pacific as part of a four-woman team and began brainstorming her next adventure immediately afterward. Pfendler says she uses the challenges to grow and learn about herself, viewing fear as motivation.
“I like to be afraid because you get to work through it, and it’s the only way you can grow as a human being if you want to push yourself,” Pfendler told ESPN. “It’s always just a choice. You can be afraid of what you’re doing and still choose to go through with it because fear shouldn’t be the limiting factor to what you want.”
Beyond personal growth, Pfendler hopes her achievement will inspire others to take on their own challenges. Just 20 miles from the finish, Pfendler paused to record a video for everyone following along on social media.
“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,” Pfendler said in the video. “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.”
Pfendler also used her row to fundraise for the Whale Foundation, an organization that offers free counseling services to the Grand Canyon river guiding community. Pfendler has raised over $180,000 for the nonprofit, which she says helped her through a mental health crisis after an incident on a Grand Canyon trip.
While Pfendler does not have a concrete plan for her next challenge, she intends to keep chasing “big, scary things.”
