Around the World Alone
(Aug. 15, 2024) When you imagine the prototypical sailor, the image of a fit, tan, wealthy man likely comes to mind. Cole Brauer hopes to change that.
“One of the biggest things that I wanted to show was that going around the world can be for anyone, and any sort of difficult task doesn’t have to only be for these big, brawny men in this super-male-dominated industry, which is what sailing has been,” Brauer said.
It is an opinion she comes by honestly. Earlier this year Brauer became the first American woman to sail single-handed around the world nonstop.
“If you were to meet me, I’m very small and I don’t have a legacy name of any sort. We wanted to show that you could be a sailor and be anyone, come from any place, and still do the crazy things like going around the world alone,” she said.
Brauer will be on-island to give a talk tonight at the Nantucket Yacht Club as part of Nantucket Race Week, a series of regattas and social events that serve as a fundraiser for Nantucket Community Sailing.
There Brauer will tell the story of how she went from a 19-year-old who lied her way on to her college sailing team to a professional sailor who took the Internet by storm and racked up hundreds of thousands of social media followers by documenting her 130-day journey around the world alone on her Class40 sailboat First Light.
Brauer grew up in a working-class family living in the wealthy area of East Hampton on Long Island, N.Y.
Despite always having a love for water, she never considered the world of sailing.
“The yacht club atmosphere was something I never even knew existed,” Brauer said. “I didn’t know that sailing really was a sport that you could even be a part of. It’s like a kid who always plays soccer or basketball finding out at 19 that you can actually ride horses. It’s just an entirely different planet.”
After arriving at the University of Hawaii, Brauer walked on to the Rainbow Warriors’ sailing team by lying to her coach about her sailing experience. In college sailing, where a slender sailor is preferred in order to keep the weight in the boat down, she quickly found a home on the water.
“I was immediately put on the team and then put into some pretty intense training to try to catch up to the athletes who had been doing it since they were 4 or 5 years old. I got into that, and it’s kind of one of those things where it grabbed onto me and hasn’t really let me go yet,” she said.
“I think it combined a lot of the things that I love. I love to work, I’m a total workaholic. I like working with my hands and I like being outside, so sailing was kind of that big part where I could do everything that I ever wanted. I could be out in nature, making money and working with my hands. It’s just very addicting.”
Now fully immersed in the world of sailing, Brauer sought opportunities to participate in The Ocean Race, a 10-leg open-ocean regatta that sees crews of seven to 10 people navigate the globe.
With a rule that at least one member of the crew must be a woman, Brauer began trying out for different teams. She quickly found that they were looking for a woman who had the size and strength of a man, rather than someone of her stature.
“It drove me crazy because they would put you on an airplane, they would pay your way to go to France, and you’re there for two weeks at the hardest tryout of your entire life, they treat you like absolute sh*t, and then they cut you and send you home,” Brauer said.
Despite multiple tryouts Brauer wasn’t able to earn a spot, as she was told that she was too small to handle the southern ocean and as an American she wouldn’t get along with the rest of the crew largely made up of Europeans.
“I had gone to the University of Hawaii where everyone was a different nationality, so it didn’t really matter to me at all if someone looked different than me, but I couldn’t believe that I had flown all the way to Europe to be told by a Dutch man that I was too short and I was an American, which I already knew,” Brauer said.
She realized that if she wanted to complete her goal of sailing around the world, she would need to do it herself. That’s when she explored the Global Solo Challenge, which began Oct. 29 last year. Brauer finished second after spending 130 days on her boat circumnavigating the globe.
While on board Brauer became a social media sensation, racking up over 400,000 followers on Instagram as she sought to inspire the next generation of sailors.
“Even five months later, I’m recognized in every bar and every restaurant. I’ve been recognized in Switzerland on a chair lift just by my voice. I’ve been recognized in the weirdest possible places by non-sailors and sailors alike, and friends of friends who followed along,” Brauer said.
Brauer will be joined tonight by longtime summer resident David Southwell, a friend who himself sailed singlehanded from Plymouth, England to Newport, R.I. this year, winning the Single-handed Trans-Atlantic Race, for what they’ve termed a “banter session.” The idea was conceived over dinner a couple of weeks ago.
“I was talking to him about how I’ve been doing a lot of these speaking engagements, and a lot of these speaking engagements have been quite formal,” Brauer said.
“We named it the banter session because we can just kind of go back and forth quite easily and chat. We wanted to do almost like the uncensored speaking engagement. It’ll be a much more fun session speaking about sailing and my around-the-world race.”
Brauer’s talk is free, but registration is required. Call (508) 228-1400 to RSVP.
For Nantucket Race Week results updated daily, visit www.ack.net.
For more information on Race Week, visit www.nantucketraceweek.org