Cole Sinanian
LONG Island, New York native Cole Brauer became the first US woman to circumnavigate the world solo by sailboat on Thursday, when she arrived in A Coruña to spray champagne and hug her family after 130 days at sea.
The 29-year-old finished second in the Global Solo Challenge — a 26,000-nautical-mile ocean sailing race — behind France’s Phillipe Delamare, who pulled into the A Coruña port on February 24th.
Brauer timed her entrance into A Coruña’s harbor to align with the sunrise in honor of her boat, a 40-foot-long racing sailboat named “First Light.
“Amazing finish!!!! So stoked! Thank you to everyone that came together and made this process possible,” she wrote on her Instagram account, where she’s provided regular updates on her epic journey to her 469,000 followers.
She departed from the Galician city back in October, following a route down the coast of western Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope at the tip of the continent, before crossing into the Pacific Ocean just after Christmas.
Though she was thousands of miles away from her friends and family, she did partake in some holiday festivities, donning a dress and hosting a one-person rave on New Years Eve.
After tracing the border of the Southern Ocean for weeks, Brauer navigated the dangerous waters of the Drake Passage off the southern tip of South America not far from Antarctica’s icy shores, before reentering the Atlantic on January 27.
During her journey she faced both hardship and beauty.
She befriended porpoises who played in the currents beside her hull some days, while on others, she struggled against the raw power of Mother Nature.
In December, amidst high winds and rough seas off the coast of southern Africa, she was thrown across the deck of her boat and injured her rib.
Brauer was the only woman competing in this year’s race.
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