If one measure of success is the ability to put a roof over one’s head, then Cole Brauer has come a long way. Consider that throughout the American’s ascent to darling newcomer of the global singlehanded offshore scene she lived out of her van in people’s driveways, often owned by the same people whose boats she was working on.
“She did sleep in the van,” says Michael Hennessey, who gave Brauer her platform to success aboard the Class40 Dragon in 2019, which she raced into history five years later. “I have repeatedly offered her a perfectly comfortable bedroom, but she chose to sleep in the van. And still chooses to sleep in that van. She passes through, she has a key to the house and uses it for the kitchen and shower, but when it comes to sleeping she prefers to sleep in her van.”
Nothing ever stays the same, however, and in late February the 31-year-old Brauer found herself hunting for a condo in Miami. She’d recently returned from a delivery to Sydney from Spain aboard First Light, née-Dragon, her “favorite boat,” with new owner Elizabeth Tucker of Australia.
Brauer’s final sail aboard her beloved yacht, a 2008 Owen Clarke design, brought tears amid reflections of joy. Brauer estimates she sailed more than 100,000 nautical miles on First Light. It certainly ushered her into history books.
During the 70-day delivery Brauer was named US Sailing’s 2024 Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year for her remarkable achievement of becoming the first American woman to race singlehandedly and non-stop around the world, which she did in the 2023-’24 Global Solo Challenge.
Brauer’s rise through the sport has been meteoric. A scant 12 years ago the 5-foot-2, 100-pound Brauer didn’t know anything about sailing. It wasn’t in her family’s genes. As a kid she played around on the beaches of eastern Long Island, N.Y., but sailing amounted to nothing more than banging about in a JY15 on Sag Harbor. College was meant to lead her to med school, to be an OB/GYN. But she found her clarion call while watching boats sailing on the waters off Hawaii when readying for college.
“Nature is what drew me to the sport,” says Brauer. “I knew I wanted to be outdoors. When I moved to Hawaii for college in 2013, I could see everyone out sailing, I could see the ocean from my apartment and couldn’t understand why I wasn’t out there. So, I started contacting a lot of people and one of those was the sailing coach at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The rest is history.”
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