Sailor Cole Brauer makes history!
On Thursday, Brauer, 29, of Long Island, New York, shared an Instagram post marking her milestone after becoming the first American woman to race solo around the world.
“Amazing finish!!!! So stoked! Thanks to everyone who came together and made this process possible. 😭😍🌈,” the account posted alongside a picture of him standing on the side of his yacht First Light while waving sprinklers in Spain .
Brauer popped open a bottle of champagne in another Instagram Story photo, which the Regatta Rescue account captioned, “She’s back!!”
Brauer’s media manager Lydia Mullan also updated followers on Instagram, writing on the sailor’s account as he documented the historic milestone: “Cole is back on land!! THANK YOU EVERYONE for tuning in, for being here with us the last four months, for such amazing supporters of this campaign. We love you.”
Sailor Cole Brauer becomes the first American woman to race solo around the world.
Cole Brauer Ocean Racing/Instagram
Fiona O’Keeffe wins US Olympic marathon in first marathon and heads to Paris
Of the 16 skippers at the inaugural Global Solo Challenge, Brauer was the only woman and the youngest. At 5 feet 2 inches and 100 pounds, she was also the smallest.
“It’s a dream come true to make it here as a 100-pound girl,” she told PEOPLE last month.
Brauer and First Light set sail from A Coruña, Spain on October 29, 2023. They traveled along the West African coast, rounding South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, before heading into the Indian Ocean, where she rounded Cape Leeuwin in Australia before heading across the Pacific to South America . Brauer covered 27,000 miles in just over four months in the race.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(240x317:242x319)/cole-brauer-ocean-racing-solo-female-instagram-030724_2026-aa22a6fe55a44591b91a029462c96029.jpg)
Sailor Cole Brauer becomes the first American woman to race solo around the world.
Cole Brauer Ocean Racing/Instagram
On January 26, she reached what is considered the “Everest” of her career by circumnavigating Chile’s Cape Horn, surviving the notoriously deadly Drake Passage, the turbulent strait that connects the Pacific and Atlantic between Cape Horn and the South Shetland Islands, just above Antarctica.
While speaking with PEOPLE last month, Brauer recalled the moment 15-foot waves crashed against the deck of her 40-foot racing yacht in the Indian Ocean.
Young woman and the sea First Look: Watch Daisy Ridley Become First Female Swimmer (Exclusive)
She explained how the normally reliable boat’s autopilot feature had malfunctioned, forcing her to steer the wobbly rudder with her feet, while simultaneously managing the lines of two sails with each hand. “I’m trying to get rid of the sails because I can’t control the boat,” Brauer recalled of the harrowing experience in December.
“But I can’t leave the helm,” she continued. “It’s like driving a car on the highway and you don’t have gas or brake. All you have is this loose steering wheel. I was free-falling down the waves, I was going so fast that I reached the fastest speed I’ve ever reached on this boat, I was just flying and then free-falling.”
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
The incident was made more challenging as she suffered a probable cracked rib.
“Every movement is this shooting pain,” she recalled, adding that it took her “two days to fix the problem” but eventually “fixed it.”
“It’s not like you can quit,” she said. “You are in the middle of the ocean. There is no giving up. No one will come to save you. So it’s like, ‘Smoke it. Solve the problem.’ In the end it’s just you. You have to keep moving forward.”
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education