Cal Maritime Academy Transpac Team Silences Doubters
The 2025 Transpac featured plenty of great stories, including that of the Cal Poly Maritime Academy sailing team. The “Keelhaulers” competed on Oaxaca — a Santa Cruz 50 donated to the program in late 2024 — in the Cabrillo Boat Shop Division Five with five other boats. When all the results were tallied, they finished fourth in their division and 34th overall on corrected time. Oaxaca‘s elapsed time was 10:22:47:17, with a corrected time of 9:22:05:10.
The team consisted mostly of current Cal Maritime students, with several recently graduated alumni aboard, including Max Roth, who graduated in 2024 and served as the team’s primary helmsman.
“This is a very special race for me,” Roth told Latitude. “I’m finishing at my home yacht club with family and friends there. Diamond Head buoy is my training ground. That’s where I grew up Laser sailing as a kid and watching all the [Transpac] boats coming in. It was my childhood dream to skipper the race. My dad used to tell me bedtime stories about me finishing a Transpac — it’s very special for me living my childhood dream at such a young age.”
Cyrus Khaleeli, another recent graduate and one of Oaxaca’s navigators, said this year’s Transpac was special for him for the exact opposite reason from Max’s. “My home yacht club is where we left from. I watched people start the Transpac and knew I wanted to do it sometime in my life. Being able to do that, and this time as navigator, was a new experience for me. There was definitely some uncertainty. Finishing it was, like, ‘Wow, I can do this.’ It was an immensely proud moment.”
Oaxaca‘s team featured many sailors making their first-ever crossing. Among these was 19-year-old Oscar Perry, a native of San Francisco who just completed his freshman year at Cal Maritime.
“The main highlight was just being able to live sailing,” Perry told us. “That was pretty awesome, for lack of a better word. I was getting up from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. and sailing downwind and down waves as the sun came up. It was a sigh of relief to cross Diamond Head buoy.” Perry hadn’t had a lot of offshore sailing experience prior to the race, but was pleased to have been part of the crew. “Seeing myself and the team come together like that was amazing.”
Both Roth and Khaleeli emphasized that watching the younger sailors and first-time Transpac participants grow into their roles was one of the highlights of the race.