A record on the high seas: Cole Brauer to be first US woman to sail solo around the world

In a sea of male competitors, Cole Brauer is the only woman in an around-the-world solo sailing competition that's quickly coming to a close. Later this week, the 29-year-old from Long Island is expected to cross the finish line in waters off the coast of Spain.

At that point, she'll become the first American woman to sail solo, non-stop around the world.

Friends, peers and sailing enthusiasts have been cheering Brauer on since last October, when she embarked on her more than four-month-long journey. Her boat First Light, a special model of racing sailboat called a Class40, is expected to return to the race's starting point of A Coruña, Spain, on Thursday, according to organizers of the Global Solo Challenge.

Brauer said she anticipates arriving in Spain late the night of March 6 or early March 7.

"For the next two days or so it's a completely moving target," Brauer said in a video posted to her Instagram on March 4 in the evening, her time.

The latest official race update on Brauer said she was off the west coast of the Azores on March 2.

"Long anticipated Cole Brauer has been able to avoid the light winds of the Azores high and slingshot east," race organizer Marco Nannini wrote online, adding, "She’s now sailing on course at constant speeds above 10 knots average."

Nannini told USA TODAY he wanted to organize the Global Solo Challenge to "create a platform for sailors like Cole to showcase her skills and move on to a pro sailor career."

Over the past several months, Brauer has been keeping her more than 400,000 Instagram followers updated − and entertained − with videos from onboard First Light. The trip has been extremely challenging and physically exhausting, Brauer said in one video from December.

In the post, she describes how frustrated she felt when she had to fix and replace different parts of the boat.

"I don't want you guys to think I'm like Superwoman or something," Brauer said. "Right now I've been feeling just broken," she added, describing how she had to fix the boat's autopilot system after injuring her torso against the side of the boat's hull amid intense waves.

Who is Cole Brauer?

Brauer is from Long Island, New York, and competed for the University of Hawai'i sailing team. She went to high school in East Hampton, New York, her university team website says. She is the youngest of more than a dozen sailors, or skippers, in the Global Solo Challenge.

The professional sailor lives in Boothbay, Maine, and during the spring and summer, she can be also found in Newport, Rhode Island, gearing up for races, the Newport Daily News reported last year.

Brauer has sailed on First Light, a 40-foot yacht, for over five years, the outlet reported.

"I always said I wanted to race around the world in this boat," she told the newspaper.

From above and below First Light's deck, Brauer has been sharing aspects of her journey with followers and die-hard sailing fans.

On New Year's Eve, she donned a dress and danced at midnight, and in another post, she showed off how many pull-ups she can do.

As the only woman racing solo, non-stop around the world in the first-ever Global Solo Challenge, Brauer said she's determined to prove there's nothing women and girls cannot accomplish.

"I push so much harder when someone's like, 'No, you can't do that,'" Brauer told NBC Nightly News. "And I'm like, 'OK, watch me.'"

On her profile page on the Global Solo Challenge website, Brauer says she wants to send a message to the sailing community that it's time to leave its male-dominated culture in the past. In the profile, Brauer takes aim at a lack of equal pay and what she describes as harassment in the sailing industry.

"Just as well as this community has built me up it has broken me and my fellow female teammates down. I am doing this race for them," Brauer said.

Brauer and her spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

How long has Cole Brauer been at sea?

Brauer has been sailing for more than four months after departing on Oct. 29.

She is expected to finish in second place in the race, behind a sailor who departed about a month before she did.

The start times differed because that first place boat, Phillipe Delamare's Mowgli, is much slower, Nannini said, explaining the race's staggered start times.

"The format means that if you enter on a slow, small boat you can still win, which makes it much more inclusive that an event where a bigger budget is a definite advantage," he said.

France's Delamare will win first place prize money of 7,500 euros, and the second and third place finishers will win 5,000 and 2,500 respectively, Nannini said.

How dangerous is Cole Brauer's sailing race?

A medical team including a nurse and a physician trained Brauer and sent her on her journey with medicines and medical supplies, in case of any health issues, according to her Instagram account.

Early in the race, Brauer administered her own IV with a saline solution after she became dehydrated, according to one video posted to her social media.

Brauer's most serious health scare happened in early December, when she said gnarly ocean conditions caused the boat to jolt, throwing her across the inside of the boat and slamming her hard against a wall.

Her ribs were badly bruised as a result, and her medical team told her to alternate between taking Advil and Tylenol, Brauer said on Instagram.

"Rigging up a sleeping seatbelt has been added to my priority list," she said in the post's caption. "I know I'm very lucky that this wasn't a lot worse."

What is the Global Solo Challenge?

The inaugural Global Solo Challenge is a non-stop sailing race in which competitors departed last year from A Coruña, Spain.

The race encompasses nearly 30,000 miles and takes place mostly in the southern hemisphere.

After leaving waters off the coast of Spain, sailors travel south and round Africa's Cape of Good Hope. The race then includes the two other capes that together make up the famous three great capes: Australia's Cape Leeuwin and South America's Cape Horn.

About half of the other competitors dropped out of the race, according to racing data posted online by the Global Solo Challenge.

Delamare finished the race late last month after embarking on his journey in late September 2023, according to race data.