There is a photograph that captures what Cole Brauer did, though the photo itself is unremarkable. A 40-foot monohull sailboat, named First Light, glides into a harbor in A Coruña, Spain. A tiny figure in foul-weather gear stands at the rail, waving sparklers. On shore, a crowd that had been waiting and watching for days erupts. Brauer, who is 5-foot-2 and weighs around 100 pounds, had just become the first American woman to race solo, nonstop and unassisted around the world. That was March 7, 2024, a day before International Women's Day, and she arrived in tears, in disbelief, and in history.
On Wednesday, Sept. 16, Brauer brings that story to Newport's Jane Pickens Theater. Hosted by Charter Books, the 6 p.m. event celebrates the publication of her memoir, "First Light: Sailing Solo but Not Alone," which releases the day before. Tickets are $45 for one person and a copy of the book, or $60 for two people and one copy.
The accomplishment itself is staggering. In the 2023-24 Global Solo Challenge, Brauer covered roughly 27,000 to 30,000 miles over 130 days, finishing second in a field of 16. She was the only woman in the race and the youngest competitor by nearly a decade. Along the way, she rounded the three great capes of Africa, Australia and South America, including Cape Horn, where the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans collide in what sailors liken to climbing Everest at sea. More than half the fleet dropped out. One competitor's boat flooded after striking something; another had to abandon ship when his mast snapped as a severe storm moved in. Brauer kept going.
But the voyage was never smooth. The memoir covers the mechanical failures that plagued First Light, the food poisoning that struck mid-ocean, and the bone-cold of the Southern Ocean. At one point, a bad broach tossed Brauer across the cabin in what she described as a car-crash-level impact that injured her ribs. She continued sailing, documenting the journey for an Instagram following that exploded from roughly 10,000 to nearly half a million followers in a matter of months, drawing attention from The New York Times, People magazine and The Today Show.
What makes Brauer's story resonate beyond the sailing world is what preceded the voyage. Growing up on Long Island, she graduated from East Hampton High School in 2012 and enrolled at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, where she studied nutritional science and planned to become a doctor. Instead, she joined the college sailing team, became its captain, and fell in love with the sport. After graduating, she moved to Boothbay, Maine, and pursued professional sailing — where she encountered a wall of skepticism. On smaller circuits, she found herself regularly paid less than male counterparts, even when they were younger and less experienced. When she tried out for an Ocean Race campaign in 2022, she was told that at her size, she was simply too small for the Southern Ocean.
She set out to prove that assessment wrong. She had always wanted to sail around the world before turning 30; she was 29 when she crossed the finish line in Spain. "This is really cool and so overwhelming in every sense of the word," she said, drinking champagne from her trophy.
Brauer will be in conversation with Linda Lindquist, a Newport resident who knows something about breaking barriers in sailing. Lindquist made history in 1995 as a member of America³, the first and only all-women's team to compete for the America's Cup. She is also a two-time Farr 40 world champion, and her career has spanned everything from offshore racing to serving as publisher of Yachting Magazine. In 1995, Glamour Magazine named America³ its Women of the Year, and in 1997 Lifetime Television honored Lindquist as one of its Top 100 Women of the Century. The pairing is fitting: two women who were told the water belonged to someone else, and who went anyway.
The memoir's title, "First Light: Sailing Solo but Not Alone," speaks to the paradox of the voyage. Brauer was entirely alone on the boat — no crew, no assistance, no stopping — but she was never truly by herself. Her social media feeds connected her to hundreds of thousands of followers who tracked her position, cheered her milestones and worried through her setbacks. Onboard, she would talk to First Light as if the boat were a companion. "I know the boat better than any other boat I have ever sailed," she once said. "We have a strong understanding of each other." She and her boat crossed an ocean of skepticism together.
The Jane Pickens Theater, located at 49 Touro Street in the heart of Newport's historic district, is an apt venue. It is one of the oldest continuously operating movie theaters in the country, and it sits in a city whose maritime history runs deep. Newport has sent countless sailors to sea, and it has hosted the America's Cup for decades. On Sept. 16, it will host a woman who took on the world's most brutal ocean conditions alone, and who hopes her journey inspires others.
"It would be amazing if there was just one girl that saw me and said, 'Oh, I can do that too,'" Brauer said after her finish. The memoir, and this event, extend that invitation.