Woman sails into history books with American first
A CORUNA (Spain): Alone, Cole Brauer braved three oceans and the elements as she navigated her sailboat, First Light, for months.
When she and her 12.2m sailboat arrived Thursday in A Coruna, Spain, the 29-year-old became the first American woman to race nonstop around the world by herself, traveling across about 48,280km.
Brauer, all 1.6m and 45.4 kg of her, is one of more than a dozen sailors competing in the Global Solo Challenge. Brauer was the youngest and only woman in the group that set sail in October from A Coruna.
The starts were staggered. Brauer took off on Oct 29.
The race took Brauer south along the west coast of Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope and then eastward toward Australia. From there, she continued east where Brauer faced the unpredictable, treacherous and deadly Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America before continuing northeast across the Atlantic Ocean toward Spain.
The race took her 130 days to complete.
“This is really cool and so overwhelming in every sense of the word,” NBC News reported Brauer saying before drinking Champagne from her trophy Thursday while being celebrated by family and fans.
While Brauer is the first American woman to race around the globe alone by sea, she is not first woman to do so. Polish sailor Krystina Chojnowska-liskiewicz finished her 401-day voyage around the globe on April 21, 1978, according to online sailing sites.
Kay Cottee of Australia was the first woman to achieve the feat nonstop, sailing off from Sydney Harbor in Australia in November 1987 and returning 189 days later.
The global voyage is not an easy one, even on a vessel with a full crew.
“Solo sailors, you have to be able to do everything,” Brauer told the NBC Today show on Thursday. “You need to be able to take care of yourself. You need to be able to get up, even when you’re so exhausted. And you have to be able to fix everything on the boat.”
Along the way she encountered 9.1m waves that tossed her about the boat, according to NBC News.
She injured a rib and even gave herself an IV to fend off dehydration.
“I push so much harder when someone’s like, ‘no, you can’t do that,’ or ‘you’re too small,’” Brauer said.
“It would be amazing if there was just one other girl that saw me and said ‘Oh, I can do that, too,’” she added.