From the Editor: You Go, Girl(s)

So, how’s she doing today?

This question hops to the top of my morning scroll through the usual feeds and takes me to the YB tracking app, where I check the blue path and yellow pin that shows Cole Brauer’s progress across the Atlantic. It’s late September as I write this, and a couple of days ago she left Newport for A Coruña, Spain, on her final qualifier to the start of the Global Solo Challenge. The only female entry, she is to start the race on October 28.

She’s sailing First Light, a Class40 on which this summer she and her doublehanded co-skipper, Cat Chimney, became the first women to win the Bermuda One-Two—first to finish on both legs, and not by a little. She hopes to win the Global Solo Challenge. No less significantly, she also hopes to become the first American woman to successfully race solo nonstop around the world (“Leading the Pack,” October 2023). I know I’ll be as glued to her tracker in November and December as I was to Kirsten Neuschäfer’s earlier this year, as she became the first woman to win a solo round-the-world race, sailing her stout and beautiful 36-foot Cape George cutter Minnehaha to win the Golden Globe (“Golden Globe Glory,” August/September 2023)…

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