[Jeff_H]

I don't know whether many of us have been following the Global Solo Challenge race. As a single-handed racer, I have to admit I have been following this race closely, and had become a big fan of Cole Brauer, ever since seeing how she dealt with the Atlantic leg of the race. Since then she has consistently sailed an amazing race; creatively routing her way around challenging weather systems all of the competitors had to deal with all race long. Her routing has been a mix of courageously placing her boat in some very heavy winds and having amazing day's distance run, while not pushing so hard that she blew up the boat.

In the mean time, she set a new record time for the fastest circumnavigation in a Class 40 (or any 40 foot monohull for that matter.) And while its easy to think of the IMOCA 60's as the 'big leagues', in many ways racing a forty-footer solo-around the world is a much harder task because the skipper needs to protect the boat in conditions that a 60 footer would shrug off, and the smaller size makes it harder to carry kinds of gear that the the IMOCAs carry. Also, the Class 40's do not permit the kind of innovative technologies that help make them more manageable. Nor do Class 40's protect the skipper from the elements as well as an IMOCA 60.

To put the impressiveness of her finish in perspective, more than half of the original starters dropped out. She came in more than 8 days ahead of the next Class 40 (a newer and faster design) and she is more than a month ahead of the last place Class 40. And when I say that half the boats dropped out part of that is that one boat was sunk, and another had to be abandoned, in both cases with the crews plucked off the boats.
Here are some interviews with her. Some of the footage is outrageous:

Of course one of the neatest things she did is that her boat is called "First Light". As she approached the finish line, she purposely slowed down so that she could cross the finish line at the first light of the dawn.

My heartfelt congratulations and admiration goes out to this extraordinarily skilled sailor first, but also to her as one tough young woman.

Jeff

 

[marcjsmith]

I've been following her on the tiktok.... it is very impressive feat. wish I had the cojones to that.

 

[Bird Dog]

Five days single-handing 10-12 hour days the ICW and bays was tiring... Very cool accomplishment!

 

[paulk]

We had Cole's weather router come give a talk about weather at our club. Part of it included a Zoom connection with Cole, who took questions from us as she sailed off the Brazilian coast. We ended up with a better understanding of weather routing. It obviously can make a huge difference. Cole sailed her Class 40 into second place, beating more than one Open 50 and putting herself almost two thousand miles ahead of the next competitor.

 

[OntarioTheLake]

We had Cole's weather router come give a talk about weather at our club. Part of it included a Zoom connection with Cole, who took questions from us as she sailed off the Brazilian coast. We ended up with a better understanding of weather routing. It obviously can make a huge difference. Cole sailed her Class 40 into second place, beating more than one Open 50 and putting herself almost two thousand miles ahead of the next competitor.

We all do weather routing to some degree, but she's in a different class. I read about the incredible impact it had on her success. I assume she has better weather info than we (certainly "I") do; how much further support does she get?

Did she reveal anything about it? Who provides the weather info/ prediction? Does someone else plot the boat's potential course and feed it to her? Does she take weather info and plot her own possible courses and actions? How much is computerized and how much "paper" and crystal ball?

 

[Jeff_H]

To begin with, most shorthanded races do not permit external weather routing advice. This race explicitly included this in the NOR's.
14. Weather routing
14.1 External Weather Routing is permitted
So, I can only assume from that from Paul's comment and the NOR's that Cole had external weather routing advice.

Still, it is not unusual for weather routers to give the skipper options and explain the pluses and minuses of those options. In that regard, some of decisions made suggest that Cole had some choices that she made along the way. There is a certain consistency in the decisions that she made along the way with decisions made by her in races without external routing.

If we look at her win in the Bermuda 1-2, during the single-handed leg, where there was no outside routing permitted, she looked at the weather maps and sailed an extra 90 mile distance more than the rhumb line course in a 600 mile race. Bold Move....But even more of a bold move is that she did that to tie into a low pressure system that had her reaching in 30 knot winds. I have done that type of thing for 4-5 hours and it can be a real sleigh ride. But it takes a lot of confidence and I was not doing that through major shipping lanes. I cannot imagine doing that for days at a time. She set a course record doing that.

My sense is that she established her lead early in the race. My recollection is that coming down the Atlantic, there was a low pressure system that the Class 40 boats had to get around. The other Class 40's took a conservative path around that system. My recollection is that she dove into the edge of it and rode it for 2-3 days legging out 400-500nm. That pattern of decision making is consistent with what she did on her own in the Bermuda 1-2.

Jeff

 

[paulk]

Chelsea Freas, Cole's weather router, made it look like she would present Cole with options based on what the weather was doing and what she felt it was going to do. Decisions as to what to do obviously had to take into account how Cole was (fine after easy going in the trades, or beat up after a week of rough seas heading to Cape Horn...), what the boat could handle, and how to get the best performance from it. As a lifelong sailor and racer, Chelsea knows how wind impacts how a boat performs. She's meteorologist for the US Sailing Team and worked at Commander's Weather before starting her own outfit.

 

[Racer X]

What’s even more amazing is that this 29 year old did not even start sailing (of any kind) until she was an 18 year old freshman in college in Hawaii. To learn the skills and acquire the experience she needed to accomplish this in only 10 years is truly the most amazing feat, in my opinion.

 

[OntarioTheLake]

What’s even more amazing is that this 29 year old did not even start sailing (of any kind) until she was an 18 year old freshman in college in Hawaii. To learn the skills and acquire the experience she needed to accomplish this in only 10 years is truly the most amazing feat, in my opinion.

In many activities, zero to expert takes 5-8 years. About year 10, people get tired and give up. No doubt though, this young lady was capable and committed which gave her the edge.

 

[paulk]

Doesn't look like she tires easily. Can you do this?

COLE BRAUER OCEAN RACING on Instagram: "My parents met in a gym as body builders, my dad was a rower, triathlete and cyclist. My mom a cyclist, kayaker and trail runner. I grew up around workout equipment and in a bike shop. My parents pushed me extremely hard in cycling, rock climbing and running. All other sports were not sports and not as respected. When I was a teenager and being bad instead of grounding me as most of my childhood friends parents would do, my parents would put me on the treadmill and make me run as fast as I could for at least 20mins; in order to get my teenage angst out. They were tough but fair. All throughout school we had these physical fitness tests, there was a metric that put us in categories and my dad looked at this metric and then looked at what the boys metric was and threw the girls metric out. He said, if the boys can do it. You can too. We started with pull-ups; I was already a rock climber and an avid tree climber that pull ups came easy. But he wanted me to make sure I did more that any of the boys. Proper ones too, all the way down and all the way up. Every year when the time for the physical fitness tests came up, I had to go home and report back to my dad how I did. I always felt proud to come home and bring him my metric sheet that showed I was at the highest of my school for fitness. When I joined sailing my parents were not very happy. They didn’t see sailing as a sport that had true fitness. But now after years I can show them that all of their hard work throughout my childhood and their push for a strong mind and body has paid off. For this moment. Happy Birthday Dad. I love you. You and mom kicked ass raising me. Don’t let anyone ever tell you anything different. I am proud to be your daughter. ☺️ PS very hard to do proper pull-ups on a boat that is heeled at 18-22 degrees and slamming in 2-3m waves upwind 😂"

30K likes, 938 comments - colebraueroceanracing on February 24, 2024: "My parents met in a gym as body builders, my dad was a rower, triathlete and cyclist. My mom a cyclist, kayaker and trail runner. I grew up around workout equipment and in a bike shop. My parents pushed me extremely hard in...

www.instagram.com

 

[JToben]

I don't know whether many of us have been following the Global Solo Challenge race. As a single-handed racer, I have to admit I have been following this race closely, and had become a big fan of Cole Brauer, ever since seeing how she dealt with the Atlantic leg of the race. Since then she has consistently sailed an amazing race; creatively routing her way around challenging weather systems all of the competitors had to deal with all race long. Her routing has been a mix of courageously placing her boat in some very heavy winds and having amazing day's distance run, while not pushing so hard that she blew up the boat.

In the mean time, she set a new record time for the fastest circumnavigation in a Class 40 (or any 40 foot monohull for that matter.) And while its easy to think of the IMOCA 60's as the 'big leagues', in many ways racing a forty-footer solo-around the world is a much harder task because the skipper needs to protect the boat in conditions that a 60 footer would shrug off, and the smaller size makes it harder to carry kinds of gear that the the IMOCAs carry. Also, the Class 40's do not permit the kind of innovative technologies that help make them more manageable. Nor do Class 40's protect the skipper from the elements as well as an IMOCA 60.

To put the impressiveness of her finish in perspective, more than half of the original starters dropped out. She came in more than 8 days ahead of the next Class 40 (a newer and faster design) and she is more than a month ahead of the last place Class 40. And when I say that half the boats dropped out part of that is that one boat was sunk, and another had to be abandoned, in both cases with the crews plucked off the boats.
Here are some interviews with her. Some of the footage is outrageous:

Of course one of the neatest things she did is that her boat is called "First Light". As she approached the finish line, she purposely slowed down so that she could cross the finish line at the first light of the dawn.

My heartfelt congratulations and admiration goes out to this extraordinarily skilled sailor first, but also to her as one tough young woman.

Jeff

Well said. Impressive woman! Impressive person!

 

[AWT2_Sail]

While I was duly impressed with her accomplishment, I was equally in awe of everyone who even took on this challenge. As I was wringing my hands about whether to go out in 18-20 knots with 30 kt gusts this weekend, I was blown away how casually they report 30-35 knots sustained and seas 5-8 meters or more. Their only complaint was having to go and do another sail change. Not all of them are simply furled and unfurled. Crazy.
Maybe someday for me... Maybe.

 

[paulk]

All you really need is a Class 40 to get going: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class40. They're big enough to bring a friend along if you want.