Kelsey Pfendler made history on July 3, 2026, when she became the first American woman to row solo from California to Hawaii, completing the crossing in just 43 days and setting a new speed record. An open ocean rower and longtime Grand Canyon river guide, Kelsey spent two years preparing and funding the expedition herself. Her journey culminated in a record that shattered the previous men's mark by nearly nine days and established one of the fastest solo ocean rows ever completed across the Pacific.
Kelsey Pfendler made history on July 3, 2026, when she became the first American woman to row solo from California to Hawaii, completing the crossing in just 43 days and setting a new speed record. An open ocean rower and longtime Grand Canyon river guide, Kelsey spent two years preparing and funding the expedition herself. Her journey culminated in a record that shattered the previous men's mark by nearly nine days and established one of the fastest solo ocean rows ever completed across the Pacific.
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Kelsey Pfendler:
You can see land over there, that's Oahu right there. I can see it and it can see me. Day 44 of becoming the first American woman to row solo from California to Hawaii. I spent the majority of the morning rowing. I am going to arrive at Ala Wai Harbor sometime this night, and I'm so excited.
Shelby Stanger:
On July 3rd, 2026, Kelsey Pfendler took the adventure world by storm when she broke the speed record for rowing solo from California to Hawaii, completing the feat in just 43 days. This wild idea had been brewing for some time. Kelsey has worked as a river guide on the Grand Canyon for a decade, and was already an experienced open ocean rower. She spent two years preparing and saving up for her solo expedition and her hard work paid off. She became the first American woman to make the crossing alone, and she beat the men's world record by almost nine days.
I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op Mastercard.
Kelsey Pfendler, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. Your row to Hawaii from California, smashing records was quite a feat, and it just happened a couple of weeks ago so congrats.
Kelsey Pfendler:
Thank you so much. It's an honor to be on here.
Shelby Stanger:
Where did you grow up? How did you get into outdoor sports?
Kelsey Pfendler:
I grew up in the middle of nowhere in Upstate New York in a super rural area, and I wasn't an outdoor extreme sports kid at all. I swam competitively and that was my thing. So, I graduated high school, and my mom for my 18th birthday got a Groupon, if don't you remember what that was-
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah.
Kelsey Pfendler:
... a Groupon for a rafting trip for my 18th birthday and we went whitewater rafting in the Adirondacks. And it blew my mind because growing up in a really rural area I was told or I understood that the only things that were available to me was either going to college or going into the military. And I was like, "Neither of those sound very awesome, but I guess that's what you do." But then I discovered that people guide for a living, and it wasn't even part of my understanding before this moment. And I cornered one of the river guides and I was like, "How do you do this?" And he was like, "Well, you could show up for free for the rest of the summer and get your license if you want. We're not going to pay you."
And I was like, "Okay, cool. Cool. I'll do that." So, I worked at a pizza shop at night and then would come and just train and clean life jackets, and wetsuits, and move boats for free till I got my license. And then I found my way to Grand Canyon, which I've been in Grand Canyon for, this is my 10th season now. And from that experience, I started exploring a little bit more of just the world of water. I went on a sailing trip right before COVID where I helped crew a boat from Valencia, Spain to the Caribbean, and I got to see a couple ocean rowing boats on my way across the Atlantic. And I was like, "Whoa, this is crazy. How do people do this?"
And it really sat in my brain for a couple years and I just wouldn't stop thinking about it until I got closer to my 30th birthday and I was like, "Am I doing the things that I say I want to do?" You have that I'm almost 30 moment and you're like, "What am I doing? Are you doing the things that you want to be doing?" And the thing that had sat with me for so long was these ocean rows.
Shelby Stanger:
Tell me a little bit more though about rafting and movement on water that just is so attractive to you, because yes, the Grand Canyon is beautiful, but there's something for you about being on a boat, moving down water that you're obsessed with.
Kelsey Pfendler:
I think the cool thing about water is when you are either in a whitewater situation or on the ocean, you can't pretend that you're in control, and there's an undeniable power in these bodies of water that make you acknowledge the presence of it. You're never going to pretend you're more powerful than the ocean, you're never going to pretend you're more powerful than the Colorado River, because these things are so massive and incredible, but also unforgiving. They don't really have an opinion about you and they don't really care the outcome. And I think that's something that's really good for us to acknowledge and experience, because we pretend so often that we have control over the situation in our lives and just the humility that comes from being in these really, really powerful places is so, I think good for my mental health because it lets me relinquish control of the surroundings while still trying to maintain control of myself.
Shelby Stanger:
Rafting through the Grand Canyon is magical, but it's also highly technical. As she kept leading trips, Kelsey's skills advanced quickly. She moved on to whitewater racing and then became interested in ocean rowing. In 2024, Kelsey joined three women on a team expedition, rowing from Monterey, California all the way to Kauai. In the end, they spent roughly 41 days rowing 2,800 miles across the Pacific.
Kelsey Pfendler:
It was amazing, but it was also very challenging and complicated because we encountered every bump in the road you could probably encounter. We were obviously just broke, so we were doing literally everything we could just to raise enough money for a boat. We were doing bingo nights in any bar that would let us in, we were tabling outside of Walmarts. Yeah, just for 10 bucks, anything. We were like, "We're going to make this happen somehow."
Shelby Stanger:
Good.
Kelsey Pfendler:
And we pulled off enough money to get an ocean rowing boat, and it was sold to us from a guy that promised us it was crossing ready. And when it arrived in LA and I picked it up, it was very much not crossing ready.
Shelby Stanger:
Oh, no.
Kelsey Pfendler:
And after a brief mental breakdown I was like, "Okay, I'm going to learn how to fix this boat, I guess." And we ended up being able to get the boat ready for the launch, and the row itself was incredible. I loved it, learned so much, because I was a skipper so I was the captain of the team. And I took on a lot of the pressure on myself to make sure everyone was okay, make sure everyone was safe. My guiding brain was always locked in to protect these people because it's hard to get out of that. But we had a really incredible row as a team, but I remember being halfway through that row and realizing it was almost over and being absolutely devastated that I wasn't going to be in that spot again, or I didn't already have a plan to be offshore in a tiny boat yet.
And that was very sad to me and also just kind of scary to think about. And I was like, "Well, that's not an acceptable answer." So, I knew I was going to do a row even before I got off the boat from my first row, another row.
Shelby Stanger:
So, what was step one? First of all, you did research, but then you had to get a boat. They're not cheap.
Kelsey Pfendler:
I started exploring what boats were available to me. And because I'm in this ocean rowing community and because I knew I was going to do another row, I have been deeply aware of all the boats that exist in the U.S. and also the other boats abroad that are available, because there's only so many of these boats. And I contacted a person that is a very good friend of mine now that had kind of a perfect boat. It's an R25, the boat that I used, her name is Lily. And I asked him about buying her, and at first he was like, "Oh yeah, I'm going to do this row and then you can purchase her after." And I was like, "Oh, perfect." What ended up happening for him is his row got canceled and he came back to me and he was like, "Hey, I can't sell this boat to you. I'm not ready to sell her, I haven't gotten to finish my row."
But he was like, "I have a proposition for you. I want you to use the boat and then just give it back." And it was an incredibly gracious offer, and I was so grateful because that was insanely massive for me to have a boat that I didn't have to buy. These boats are like 70 to $120,000, and I was ready to spend my entire life savings on another boat. So he let me borrow Lily, and this is the way I like to interact with these things is I wanted to make Lily better than he gave her to me. So, I stripped and replaced the antifouling to some race finish that makes her ... The anti-foul is to reduce growth on the bottom of the boat, but I used a race finish that is very smooth so it doesn't create any drag.
And I replaced some of the electronics that I though were upgrades and did a lot of stuff to try to make Lily a better boat than what he gave to me. And then everything else that goes into it is just so much logistical planning. There's obviously the training, which takes up a lot of your time. I'm training six days a week when I'm training for a row. And then there's all the administrative stuff that people wouldn't necessarily think of. You need a land crew, you need emergency contacts, you need the tracker that goes through this. If you're going for a record, you need the exact timing of the tracking requirements so you can submit that after to Guinness and to the record holding bodies. You need all of your gear, you need everything tested, you need just endless amounts of stuff.
Shelby Stanger:
It took almost two years for Kelsey to prepare for her solo row across the Pacific. She spent most of the time working to save money for the crossing, and prepping her boat, which was just 24 feet long and 5 feet wide. It had a cabin at either end and in between there was a sliding seat and a place for her to strap her feet, just like an erg machine that you see at the gym. She also had to make sure the equipment on board, various computers, solar panels, batteries, and the desalinator was all working properly. To prep her body, she trained on the rowing machine 10 hours a week, power lifted 3 days a week, and worked on her grip strength so she wouldn't develop what she called claw hands, which can happen after holding the oars for hours on end. Once she was ready, Kelsey had to time her departure from California just right.
The northern part of the Pacific is known for strong winds that will push vessels right back towards land. If she left when the winds were too strong, she would end up right back at the shore. Beyond waiting for the right weather window, Kelsey also tried something unconventional to help her break through the strong currents.
What was day one like just leaving Monterey?
Kelsey Pfendler:
It was super emotional, because I was doing an unsupported row outside of a race, and with these solo mid-Pacifics the weather window is really important. So, I had actually was almost about to leave and then had to cancel it three different times because of weather differences. So by the time I actually left, I had had the boat in the water, getting everything packed, getting everything ready, and then had to call it off because the weather had changed. And then, by the time I finally got the weather window and it stayed and it was perfect, I had gone through that so much that it was definitely an emotional experience. There's fear, there's definitely the option that you're going to fail. I went into this knowing that failure and just going to Mexico was 100% an option, because that's happened to a lot of people.
But I also was just super excited about it. I was excited to finally be doing the thing, and I rowed away from the shore but it was such a foggy day, the marine layer was so thick that it's not like I got to be like, "Goodbye, California." It was just instantly in a fog bank and I was like, "Well, okay, I've left." And it was awesome. I paid a lot of attention to these endurance runners and how they were doing their sleeping, and how they were resting and all of this stuff. These people are only sleeping maybe 20 minutes in three days a lot of the time, or maybe a little bit more.
So, I had come up with a plan for my first couple days, because the first couple days are the most critical of getting off the coast so you don't get pushed back, where I was going to do some weird sleep stuff. So, I was rowing for 45 minutes and then I would lay down on the deck and just sleep for five minutes, and then I would get up and row for 45 minutes and then I would sleep for five minutes. And I just had a timer and I was doing that, especially at night, because all these other rowers that had done this mid-Pacific row, a lot of them didn't row at night or a lot of them would throw out their para anchor for five or six hours to get some rest, and then they'd wake up and have to make up ground.
So, the para anchor reduces your drift, but if it catches an easterly current, you're just going to go back towards shore. And for me, when I was hearing this and looking at all of it, I was like, "Okay, but what if you just don't do that and what would that look like?" So I had come up with this kind of crazy plan that I was going to try to almost not sleep for the first three days to try to get off the coast. So, there was a lot of auditory hallucinations that come with not sleeping that much. It was definitely hard, but I very much believe that that was a big part of the reason why I got off the coast so fast. I had a good weather window, so I was just like, "All right, I'm just going to do everything I can to keep moving."
Shelby Stanger:
In July of 2026, Kelsey Pfendler set a new world record for becoming the fastest person to row solo from California to Hawaii. Being out on the Pacific Ocean completely alone for 43 days was an empowering and beautiful experience for Kelsey. It turns out it was also pretty fun for everyone watching from home. Kelsey made a daily video diary, which she sent via satellite to her friend to upload on Instagram every day. Many of the posts went viral, and people all over the world started watching along and rooting for Kelsey as she made history.
Your story went viral pretty fast. Did you know it was going viral or was your social media person doing it?
Kelsey Pfendler:
I mean, Jen was the one interfacing with all of that. Obviously I knew, but I didn't have context.
Shelby Stanger:
So, you would send her videos and she would just log into your Instagram and upload?
Kelsey Pfendler:
Yeah, yeah. So, I would send her the cuts of what I wanted and tell her about my idea for it. So, I was very much like, "Hey, Jen, I want you to do this thing and this thing, and this is my plan." Because I did all of my social media very intentionally. I have a background as a theater kid. I think you can tell, even in social media stuff, you can tell when someone puts thought into what they're trying to represent and communicate, and I knew I wanted to represent certain things.
Shelby Stanger:
What's an example?
Kelsey Pfendler:
The ocean rowing community is very small and everyone obsessively watches other people's rows, just because you get so much out of it, especially as a person that is involved in the ocean rowing community. But I think I knew what I wanted to do was post every day because it would keep me accountable, and I think there's some importance in showing the reality of the process of this whole project. So, I put a lot of thought even before I went on this row of how I wanted to represent ocean rowing and make it feel like you could actually understand what it'd be like to be on the boat.
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah, can you share some of the harder moments you had on the boat?
Kelsey Pfendler:
Yeah, so around day eight was one of the harder periods of at least the first couple weeks. So like I was saying, getting off the coast, super hard. And then I knew that that big system was going to come and hit me where it brought pretty significantly big waves, up to 16 to 18 feet with 30 plus mile hour winds. And I had some pretty big days, at least three days of really big weather, really big nights that were pretty scary, but I was ready for that. What I wasn't ready for was after that system passed I was like, "Okay, you got it, you did it. You made it through the big weather, you're going to have some chill moments." And I was just so tired at that point because I hadn't been sleeping at all, really. I was exhausted, and I hadn't been eating enough because I'd been so busy just in this big water.
It was really hard to make any type of food, so I was just eating snacks. I was pretty depleted at that time. And if I had looked at the weather more in-depthly, I probably could have seen this coming but I kind of convinced myself that I was going to get a break. But what happened after that system passed is this really weird kind of low pressure swirl below the system formed blowing from the west, pushing me east back towards shore.
And I was not emotionally prepared for that day, so I had rowed until I think 11:00 the day before, and I was getting ready, and I was like, "Okay, you're going to get a little bit of sleep. Everything's calming down." I was getting ready to go to bed and this wind just starts picking up and picking up and picking up. And I'm like, "If I stop rowing I'm going to lose a lot of ground." So, instead of getting a rest and getting able to sleep, I rowed that day, so my day eight, from 11:00 PM until essentially 8:00 PM the next day. I didn't stop, and it was against this really strong adverse wind where I wasn't making any progress. I was just straining to maintain my position essentially while trying to move a little bit south, but really just fighting not to get pushed east.
And it was pretty devastating to me that day just because I was so tired and I was not prepared for it, and I spent most of the day just sobbing, and just trying to bargain with the wind and thinking that something's listening, nothing's listening to you. But I remember calling my weather router and him being like, "Kelsey, got this? It's going to switch by midnight tonight. You're going to make it through, you're okay." And I was like, "Okay, I have an end. There's an end to this. I see it." So, I rowed until 8:00 and I threw out my para anchor for a short period of time just to be able to feed myself and rest for a moment. I got maybe an hour or so of sleep, and I woke up at 11:00 and they were right. The wind had shifted, and I was able to keep moving in a positive direction.
Shelby Stanger:
Out on the water, Kelsey had more company than you'd expect. She saw whales, dolphins, and turtles swimming nearby. Flying fish landed right in her boat, which forced her to stop rowing so she could toss them back into the ocean. She even saw a group from the Coast Guard who sang her happy birthday on her birthday. As she approached Hawaii, Kelsey felt a mixture of emotions. There was a part of her that just wanted to stay on the water, but as the miles ticked by, Kelsey realized that if she kept her current pace she had a shot at breaking the men's speed record. That would mean she would become not only the first American woman to make the crossing solo, but also the fastest person to do it, period.
Well, what was it like when you realized you could break the men's record?
Kelsey Pfendler:
I was probably two weeks in, and I knew that I was pretty significantly ahead of the women's record. And for fun, I did some math and I was like, "Okay, how many miles a day do I need to do to break the men's record?" And I just did that math and I put it in my back pocket and I was like, "Okay, I have that number." And I was just like, "I'm going to try to do that number." It's a good metric for me to have. And sometimes I'd pass it, sometimes I'd be right on it, but a lot of the time I was doing that. But I would not really let myself acknowledge that I was truly ahead of the men's record until way later in the trip, for a lot of reasons, because things change rapidly and you can lose a row on the last day, especially with this mid-Pacific row.
The first woman to ever row solo from California to Hawaii got pulled around the island of Oahu and missed the island, had to get towed in. So, I was very aware that I could blow it on the last day. So, I really was very protective of saying that out loud or celebrating too early. But I think when I allowed myself to think that if I didn't blow the last day I could have a chance at beating the men's record was when I knew that I was closer to Hawaii than I had distance on the record. So I mean, I was 525 miles ahead of the men's record and I had 480 miles left to go to Hawaii. So, that was kind of the moment where I was like, "Okay, I think I have a shot here." But still, the last day coming into Molokai Channel was super intense.
Shelby Stanger:
So, tell me about that last day real quick.
Kelsey Pfendler:
I got up at 2:00 AM and I rowed the rest of the day. My weather routers were absolutely incredible. One of my mentors/role models/amazing human being, Liz Wardley, who's a professional sailor and ocean rower, and then her business partner, Lincoln, who is also a professional sailor, was routing me for the second half. And he had done a lot of sailing in the islands and as well as paddling the Molokai Channel eight times, so he's very familiar with that section of water. And I had called him a couple times that week, just kind of anxious about the Molokai Channel, being like, "Oh my God, what's going to happen? I know it's going to be really intense." And he's like, "It's going to be okay." And it was really windy at that time too. So, I'm going five and a half knots, which is faster than I've gone the entire row.
And I assumed, and everyone else in my life assumed that I was going to get there around 2:00 AM, and it would be really chill because no one would be at the yacht club and we would just have it to ourselves. But because I was going so fast, the wind was so strong and the current was so strong, I ended up getting there at 9:00 PM, which is a very reasonable hour for most people to still be awake, which was wonderful but also not ideal for me because it meant that there were so many people there. It was July 3rd, one of the busiest nights of the yacht club's entire year, and then obviously 4th of July weekend, so a million people were in Oahu in Waikiki. And while I was rowing into the harbor, the entrance of the harbor is in between these two reefs, so there's a really small entrance. And I had this wonderful man named Marley who was just guiding me in, because I'm rowing backwards obviously so I can't see the entrance very well.
And he's on my left, and then on my right is just this concrete kind of jetty, and there's 2,000 people there just screaming at me. And I'm just over here, here's Marley, and he's like, "You're doing great. Don't worry, that's not for you." And I'm just like, "Okay." And I'm rowing in and these people are just screaming at me and screaming my name, and I am so overwhelmed because it was not what I was expecting at all. When I left, I told my friends what I wanted to do was get off the boat and then go to a Denny's to have pancakes, because they're always open so it didn't matter. I didn't have to plan anything past that. I was like, "We'll just go to Denny's and eat pancakes and it'll be great and it'll just be five people." And that's not what happened at all. So I get to the dock, get off, and there are a bunch of people that I know, and then some people I don't know are putting leis on me, like strangers are kissing me, and I'm just like-
That's crazy.
Shelby Stanger:
... dazed.
Kelsey Pfendler:
You haven't seen anybody in 47 days.
Oh, it's a lot. And I'm just kind of dazed and confused, and I end up hiding in a back closet for a little while just to regain sanity with a couple of my friends and family. And then someone comes into the room and is like, "There is a crowd of hundreds of people standing outside demanding that you come outside and talk to them." And then I was just like, "Hi, thank you for coming. I'm going to go lay down now." I didn't know what to say, and I was like, "Why am I here?" So, that was interesting. Yeah, that's all I remember from that night.
Shelby Stanger:
What are a few things you think you took away from it?
Kelsey Pfendler:
What did I take away from it? I mean, I had never spent that much time alone with myself, and it was really nice to be able to be sure that I can be comfortable in my own skin alone. That was really wonderful. It's really cool to be able to just be who you are without anyone else expecting anything of you. We're sometimes being different people for anyone that we have relationships with. I act differently towards my mother than I do my sister and towards my partner, and things like that. We don't often get the opportunity to just be the person we are when we're not trying to relate to someone else. And I appreciated not having that role to fill, and just being able to be the person that I am for that long of a time and get to know me and get to know what I liked.
And I had a great time. I loved it. I had a lot of fun.
Shelby Stanger:
I'm curious the advice you have or what you hope people took away from it. I know this was for you, but what do you hope people took away from watching your journey?
Kelsey Pfendler:
So, I wasn't interacting with all the social media while I was rowing, but I did get a lot of interactions post row, emails and people reaching out to me, and also people in person coming up to me that had recognized me in Hawaii. And a lot of these people were majority women that had just really needed something, especially in this moment in time, to make them feel a little bit more powerful in their own skin. And the fact that they found any inspiration from my story was absolutely massive to me, and I feel very protective of that. I want to continue to hold that in reverence and not try to manipulate any of that. And I want to continue to be a source of excitement and also a push for other people to want to take on big, hard, scary things in their lives. And I think if anyone can take anything out of what I'm doing is I try to be very honest about the fact that my last two rows were very messy in the preparation.
It wasn't a straight line. I worked three different jobs to make it happen. The sponsorship did not come for these first two rows. We spend so much time giving our lives to other people and to pursuits of money for these companies that don't love you back a lot of the time, and your dreams are just as worthy of your time as the jobs that you're working. I know it's so challenging because everything's expensive and everything is hard, but finding ways to prioritize your dreams and remembering that your dreams are so much more worth your time than some of these other things that we give our lives to is really, really important. And trying to be creative about how to make that happen for yourself should be a priority to you if that's the type of life that you want to have.
Shelby Stanger:
Kelsey used her row to raise money for the Whale Foundation, which provides support for the Grand Canyon river guiding community. You can visit whalefoundation.org to find out more. If you want to see videos of Kelsey's row and find out what she's up to now, you can find her on Instagram @yourowkelsey. That's Y-O-U-R-O-W-K-E-L-S-E-Y. I think she has another wild idea brewing that hopefully she'll tell us about soon.
If you liked this episode, I highly recommend you check out our other episodes with amazing ocean rowers. Earlier this year we had on Terrence Smith. We've also talked to Tez Steinberg and the Lat 35 woman's rowing team. We'll link all of those episodes in our show notes.
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producer is Jenny Barber. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. Thank you again to our partner, Capital One and the REI Co-op Mastercard. As always we love it when you follow the show, take time to rate it, and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.