Cole Brauer has become the first American woman to sail solo around the world non-stop.
Brauer, 29, finished the Global Solo Challenge in 2nd place in her 2008 Owen-Clarke designed Class 40 First Light on 7 March.
Brauer completed the race – in which competitors set off in a ‘pursuit’-style staggered start – in 130d 2h 45m. She finished 2nd to Frenchman Philippe Delamere, who was sailing an Actual 46, though her corrected elapsed time was actually 17 days faster than Delamere’s.
Race organisers report that Brauer’s circumnavigation is also the fastest known time for a solo non-stop around the world on a 40ft yacht, saying it ‘can’t be ratified as an official record, but effectively improves the reference record time set by the late Guo Chuan in 2016’.
Brauer, from Maine, began sailing while at university in Hawaii. Inspired by Ellen MacArthur’s autobiography, she then decided to take up short-handed offshore racing.
“That was it,” she recalled before the start. “I was going to race solo around the world. I was going to do it as a 5ft 2in, 100lb woman. Just like Ellen MacArthur. I had found my footing.”
One of the most remarkable elements of Brauer’s Global Solo Challenge was how she inspired a huge following on social media and developed an impressive fan base both in the US and further afield, many of whom knew nothing about the race, or offshore racing in general.
With Starlink enabling her to post frequent updates,
