East Hampton graduate Cole Brauer is first American woman to solo circumnavigate the globe in a sailboat

Racing around the world has long been an aspiration of Cole Brauer, who grew up on the East End of Long Island with the ocean so close.

“I just wanted to get out on the water," said Brauer, 29.

Thursday, she made history by becoming the first American woman to solo circumnavigate the world in a nonstop sailboat race.

"I'd always wanted to race around the world, because I wanted to be able to be offshore, without anybody around, just kind of like in that Puritan type of style, no building, no cars, no nothing, just really beautiful ocean weather," she told Newsday in an interview Saturday. 

For her parents, it was far from easy to wait out the 130-day, near-30,000-mile voyage, her dad, East Hampton native David Brauer, confessed.

"It's been hell," Brauer, 59, now of Trevett, Maine, said Friday in a phone call from A Coruña, Spain. "A lot of sleepless nights."

On Thursday, her place in the books was sealed when she sailed her 40-foot sailboat into the harbor at A Coruña, on the northern Atlantic coast of Spain, finishing second among more than a dozen sailors competing in the Global Solo Challenge. She also became one in a field of fewer than 200 elite sailors — and just the 18th woman ever — to solo circumnavigate the globe nonstop, according to a register maintained by the International Association of Cape Horners.

Cole Brauer left A Coruña in October to begin her quest in the staggered-start field, sailing south along the west coast of Africa, then around the Cape of Good Hope and east to Australia. She traversed the Pacific, sailing around Cape Horn at the tip of South America and continuing across the Atlantic aboard her sailboat, named First Light.

Along the way, the 5-foot-2, 100-pound 2012 graduate of East Hampton High School got her ribs battered when she slammed into the cabin walls during a storm that generated 30-foot seas, and she had to self-administer an IV after becoming dangerously dehydrated.

She's has had to be able to handle any challenge that came her way. There really was no other way.

"You just know the boat, and you know when she's not happy, and you learn very quickly how to make her happy ... because I'm on the boat, and I have full control, I never felt like, 'Oh, I need to go to shore, oh, this and that is happening.' Things were breaking, but I had planned exactly what I needed to have for spares and tools, and even if I didn't, you just learn how to, you know, use a hammer for five different types of tools because you don't have the actual tool," she said in the interview. 

After months at sea on an arduous journey, she and her teammates are resting — finally — and celebrating.

"The whole team is here. I finished two days ago, so we've mostly been popping bottles of champagne, and I've been eating like I've never eaten in my entire life," she said. "We're just enjoying a couple days as an entire team, just a big celebration after a long, long six months of our lives, and then we all go home." 

Dawn Riley, executive director of the Oakcliff Sailing Center in Oyster Bay and the first woman to be a crew member in an America's Cup race, said, "It is incredible how she has made it around [the world] and made it look so easy to her hundreds of thousands of followers."

Brauer grew up on Springs Fireplace Road in East Hampton, off Accabonac Creek near Gardiners Island and Gardiners Bay.

Though David Brauer said Cole first learned sailing basics as a young teen on small Sunfish-type sailboats, it was her twin sister, Dalton, who was a member of the sailing club at East Hampton High School. It wasn't until Cole Brauer went to the University of Hawaii to train to be a doctor following a year studying photography at the Savannah College of Art and Design that she seriously became involved in sailing — setting the hook that would lead her to ocean racing.

"She was an artsy kid," East Hampton Union Free School District Superintendent Adam Fine said Friday of Cole. "She was a gifted photographer — and I still have a picture Cole gave me in my office . . . this beautiful, religious figure, draped in darkness and streaming light."

David Brauer said his daughters have always been strong-willed and confident, and noted Dalton also is a skilled sailor and sailing instructor.

Still, he said the toughest time for him and his wife, as parents, was fear of the unknown.

Brauer said at the last-minute prior to setting out on the Global Challenge, Cole learned she still needed more solo mileage to qualify for the race, and as a result had to sail First Light solo across the Atlantic from Newport, Rhode Island, to A Coruña just to qualify.

Then, there was the treacherous four months at sea solo.

He said being able to talk to Cole almost daily via a satellite phone was a blessing. But, he said: "While it takes a lot of angst out of the day, being able to see her, the scariest thing was when we'd be talking and there'd be a sound and she'd say, 'I have to go check something outside,' and then she'd pop out the cabin door and disappear. Most of the time on deck she'd be tethered to the boat. But with something like that, she'd just pop out, and I'd be sitting there, waiting, thinking: 'Where is she? Did she fall off the damn boat?'

"Trust me. That was hell."

The Brauers flew to Spain ahead of Cole's arrival Thursday and were on a boat that met her sailboat two miles outside the harbor — aptly, at dawn — then followed her as she sailed in on First Light.

David Brauer said his brother, who's a commercial airline pilot, named his own daughter Amelia Mayday Brauer after Amelia Earhart, and that he thought of the failed quest of the famed aviator as he followed Cole's circumnavigation to its successful end.

"I was trying to think of all the other women who have accomplished firsts," David Brauer said, "and now I think, 'Wow, my daughter is among them.' When we finally got to land? There were some tears, for sure. And a lot of joy ... It's all just so incredible."