The Meteoric Rise Of Cole Brauer

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.”

A sweet history it’s been. Brauer’s second place finish in the Global Solo Challenge and her bubbly, seemingly carefree Instagram posts during the race saw her appeal to an audience of more than half a million followers. Hennessey wasn’t surprised one bit.

“She’s a force of nature,” says Hennessey, who sailed with Brauer for three years, including a dominant win in the Bermuda One-Two in 2021. “When she and I first met she was green. She was 23, really eager, super enthusiastic, and she was a sponge. She wanted to learn about the business and the sport. Nothing was beneath her. When she came across something that she didn’t know or understand, she found someone to teach her, and she absorbed the lesson and put it to work.

“She was destined for bigger things,” Hennessey says. “She took her opportunities and lessons and accomplished something remarkable.”

Her parents, however, took time to come aboard with the idea of their daughter being a professional sailor. After all, she was living in a van down by a harbor, learning how to bleed a diesel engine, how to splice rope, how to work with composites, how to tune a rig. She was learning the nuts and bolts of what it takes to be a self-reliant sailor.

“My parents aren’t sailors so there were a lot of unknowns for them,” Brauer says. “They were upset when they found out I wanted to be a professional sailor. My dad and I didn’t speak for about six months. Then he figured out that I had a real profession, and he became super engaged. Our relationship is a lot stronger because he now sees me as an athlete.”

Brauer’s parents have Hennessey to thank (or blame) for their daughter’s success. A champion of women’s causes in his role in the financial world, Hennessey took a chance on Brauer because he needed a new 'préparteur', a captain for his Class40 efforts.

“The préparteur role is a jack-of-all-trades,” says Hennessey. “It’s not the same as hiring for a fully crewed race boat. You need someone who can prep the boat, deliver it and race it. The profile isn’t easy to find. At the time there were very few U.S. women who fit that profile, someone with blue water experience, single and double-handed. I concluded that I needed to develop someone.”

Into the breach stepped Brauer, who was yearning for just such a project to validate her commitment to the sport. The two raced Dragon together from 2019 into 2022. Their 2020 season was cut short by the Covid pandemic, but they picked up again in 2021 and dominated the 635-nautical-mile Bermuda One-Two. Hennessey won the singlehanded leg on elapsed and corrected times and, with Brauer, claimed the same honors on the double-handed leg.

In March 2022 they were racing the Caribbean 600 when the mast came tumbling down due to a forestay failure, a failure that Brauer says she should’ve been monitoring. That episode all but decommissioned Dragon from racing the rest of 2022. At the end of the year Hennessey sold the 40-footer to Frederick K.W. Day of Chicago who owned another Class40, Longbow. Brauer went along with Dragon, renamed First Light under the new ownership, and raced against Longbow.

By now Brauer knew First Light inside and out and she eventually convinced Day and his brother Stan, private philanthropists who are prominent in the bicycle industry, to let her race it doublehanded. Teamed with Cat Chimney, a graduate of Oakcliff Sailing run by America’s Cup winner and circumnavigator Dawn Riley, the two excelled in the 2023 version of the Bermuda One-Two. Brauer won the singlehanded leg by 18 hours on elapsed time and she and Chimney won the doublehanded portion by a more modest six and a half hours. On corrected time, they won class and finished second overall in fleet in each direction. On combined corrected times, they won overall.

Brauer, however, had bigger ambitions, and it was the Chicago philanthropists who gave her that opportunity. Says Brauer, “They asked, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said I had a dream to become the first American woman to race solo around the world. And they said, ‘You have six months to make your dream come true with this budget. Good luck.’ They’re great people. I’m very close to them.”

The Global Solo Challenge will never be confused as the Vendée Globe. Whereas the Vendée is the ultimate singlehanded non-stop circumnavigation race, Global Solo Challenge race organizer Marco Nannini says his race “was not an elite professional sailors’ event.” That was inconsequential to Brauer. She had her dream, and she was going to do it her way.

Her way meant regular Instagram posts showing a seemingly carefree attitude in the middle of the oceans. It meant her dancing in her cockpit on New Year’s Eve in a pink dress or doing her nails on a calm day. She wanted to bring levity to a serious situation, and it resulted in her cultivating an audience of more than half a million followers. The posts were infuriating to some weather-beaten sailors, but she connected with her audience in ways that following a solo Frenchman can’t convey.

“I am not into sailing; however, I came across your feed and am fascinated by what you are doing and love the daily post. You are teaching us land lovers as you go which is cool,” one commenter stated.

Brauer had her battles in the race. Troubles with the autopilot led to a particularly violent broach that threw her across the cabin and cracked her ribs. The trouble was due to a rudder reference unit that was in a part of the boat that she let too much water into. After replacing and recalibrating the unit, she placed a Ziploc bag over it to help keep it dry.

In the Southern latitudes problems with her hydrogenator saw her shut down her satellite communications for hours each day to reduce the battery drain when cloud cover inhibited solar power generation. She also twice self-administered an IV to combat dehydration.

All along the way her “Internet parents” followed, bouncing between trepidation, elation and downright worriment. She reportedly had more followers than the America’s Cup, SailGP and the entire 11th Hour Racing crew in the 2021-’22 The Ocean Race. She’d gone viral.

Brauer thinks she appealed to such a disparate audience because she was relatable and she didn’t make the posts all about sailing.

“I showed you could be a woman and an engineer all in one. You could make mistakes and fix them,” says the Millennial skipper. “I wanted to highlight the people on the team because it shows you’re not doing this alone. With social media you have to be authentic and real. I was honest about my mistakes. You can’t hide things from people or else they’ll start to question you. And you don’t want to give them a reason to question you.”

Brauer finished the Global Solo Challenge on Mar. 7, 2024, posting an elapsed time of 130 days, 2 hours and 45 minutes, bettering the record time for a Class40 circumnavigation by about seven days. While the race might not be for elite sailors, Brauer’s achievement confirmed her belief in herself and brought the rigors of sailing to an audience that didn’t even know about singlehanded racing. “This is really cool and so overwhelming in every sense of the word,” she said upon finishing.

Last winter amounted to a reset for Brauer. Her favorite yacht, First Light, was sold to Tucker, a former chief financial officer who left corporate life four years ago to pursue her dream of racing singlehanded around the world. She plans to follow Brauer’s wake and enter the 2027-’28 Global Solo Challenge and the delivery served as an introduction to the discipline.

“Cole’s experience has been essential—not just in solo sailing techniques, but in managing both the boat and oneself through the challenges the ocean presents,” says Tucker.

Brauer, meanwhile, is embarking on a new chapter. She has joined Boris Herrmann’s Team Malizia as co-skipper alongside Will Harris for the summer ahead. The schedule includes La Course des Caps, a new event on the IMOCA calendar in late June, and the Ocean Race Europe from mid-August into September.

“Cole is a truly talented sailor, and her journey aligns perfectly with our mission to push boundaries and inspire people,” says Herrmann. “Sailing solo around the world on an old and tricky Class40 is an incredible achievement. She’s inspiring, determined, and brings a fresh perspective to our team. While I had the chance to mentor her, I actually ended up learning a lot from her. I’m excited to race alongside Cole and Will this year, and to take on new challenges together!”

As for that condo in Miami? It’ll have to wait another day. Brauer now plans to move to France in early May for a summer being lurched around on an IMOCA 60.