Enormocast 329: Cole Brauer – Every Day the Sea Part 2

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[00:02:53] Hello and welcome to the Enormocast. This is your host, Chris Kalous. It is September 14th, 2026, about 7.45 PM here in Colorado. And this is episode 329 of the NormaCast, a part two conversation with Sailor Cole Brower. So I talked to Cole Brower back in the spring and put out her episode, Every Day of the Sea, a NormaCast 323 back in May.

[00:03:22] I hope you guys listened to that. It was the most fun I'd had on a mic in a long time. It was a total blast to go into this world of sailing. Cole solo raced a sailboat around the world in 2023. And she became something of a Instagram star, social media star by doing live broadcasts from the boat. She caught me up in her web. I know she caught a lot of you as well. As we watched the ups and downs, the strikes and gutters of being offshore for that long by herself, 130 days.

[00:03:52] She came in second in the race and she was the first American woman to do that. And when we talked in May, her book was done. It was at the publisher. She really wasn't ready to talk about it. So she came back just a few weeks later and we did this part two of that conversation. And it really is a bit of an addendum. So if you didn't listen to that back in May, 323, it's probably a good place to start. Although this thing stands alone as well.

[00:04:18] Her book, First Light Sailing Solo But Not Alone comes out today because I'm going to put this out on September 15th. So if you hear this, you can go get that book from wherever you get your books. I read it before this interview. It's awesome. It fills in a bunch of gaps of that interview we did back in May. Just really an exciting story. A very deep and powerful story. Brought tears to my eyes on occasion. It's just a really well done book.

[00:04:47] And I was excited to have Cole back on when she was able to talk about it. And real quick, though it'll probably be too late by the time you hear this, I do want to shout out a quick event that's happening here on the western slope of Colorado. Because I haven't talked about the Black Canyon lately, you know, I try to get in here whenever I can. But coming up in Grand Junction on Friday, September 18th is a fundraiser for the Friends of the Black Canyon Search and Rescue Team. It's going to be over at Grip Bouldering, which is a gym over there in Grand Junction.

[00:05:16] It's going to be slideshows, movies, drinks, silent auction. It's going to be a fun night from 6 to 9 p.m. September 18th. And again, most of you will have heard this too late or maybe don't even live around here. But fielding the Black Canyon Search and Rescue Team and rescue teams in a lot of national parks has gotten more and more difficult as budgets have gotten tighter.

[00:05:38] So you can also support this cause by going to the Friends of the Black Canyon Search and Rescue Team website, FBCSAR.org. Or support the search and rescue teams in your area. These forces are largely volunteer. They are largely run by fundraising. Even the ones in the national parks have to look around for funding and for people to volunteer. So if you're on the western slope, check it out at Grip Bouldering, Grand Junction, Colorado, Friday the 18th.

[00:06:08] Or support your local search and rescue teams any way you can. Who knows? They might be staring at your sad sorry face in the litter one of these days. And also, I finally have some information about what's going on up in Bend. I've been teasing this for a little bit. I'll be up at the Smith Rock Climbing Festival the weekend of October 3rd, 2026. Going to be hanging around. Also going to do a live interview with Alan Watts.

[00:06:34] Also encompassed in that festival is the fifth annual Rock Wrangler Climbing Competition put on by the climbing shop there, Red Point Climbing Coffee and Taps. If you want more information of any of these things, you can go to redpointclimbing.com or smithrockclimbingfestival.com for info. That's the Smith Rock Climbing Festival weekend of October 3rd. If you're up in Bend, come check it out. Okay, let's get to it.

[00:07:02] Both times that Cole has agreed to do the EnormaCast, I have felt honored. She gives us just this great window into this type of adventure that I think just seems so outlandish to me, but I find so many parallels to climbing. And so does she, actually, having been a climber when she was growing up. So I hope you enjoy this part two with Sailor Cole Brower. If you're a very serious climber, and I think you are,

[00:07:28] why on God's green earth are you redpointing your hardest sport routes in a harness designed for big walls or big routes or all-day missions? Extra gear loops, hull loops, and padding for that 3-sig aid belay on the captain are not helping you sprint to a set of chains barely 100 feet off the ground. That's like casting for brookies with a wiggle warp for Pete's sake.

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[00:08:25] And if I catch you redpointing with anything clipped to the Lethos besides a dog draw, we're going to take those away too. So get serious about sending by adding a Lethos SL Harness to your kit today. Go to arkterix.com or your favorite no-nonsense gear shop and check out the lightest thing to come to sport climbing since that 7C you somehow managed to haunt side after drinking table wine all night and column nose.

[00:08:56] Welcome back to the show, Cole. I'm very appreciative that you've decided to come back on the EnormaCast outside of your wheelhouse of sailing. And, you know, I got so many great responses to your interview. I mean, I got more than I've had in a long time for an interview. People were really, really stoked on it and, you know, had a lot of feels about it. And I think they really appreciated you sharing your story. So welcome back to the EnormaCast. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm super excited to be back.

[00:09:27] It was really cool reading, like, all the comments, and especially because a lot of them, you know, came from climbers. And I'm out of that world to mainly very pigeonholed into the sailing world that it was cool to actually, like, open it up and see so many people that were like, ah, it's, like, super stoked about it. So that it's like, oh, okay, I have a retirement plan set up. Sounds good. Come on over. We will welcome you with open arms. But I think, I mean, I was joking with people that, like, oh, yeah,

[00:09:56] but, you know, it was easy to impress us because, you know, you're doing this thing. We have nothing, you know, no idea what it was. No, come on. I know, but it's just funny because I do, you know, I do, like, two a month or not quite that many anymore. But, you know, talking to climbers and it's every one of them, like, somebody will be like, yeah, that guy was lame or that, you know, because we, you know, we know about this thing. And you're like, well, I could do that. You know, like, oh, so what? Alex, free solo at El Cap.

[00:10:26] I could probably do that if I just trained harder, you know, kind of a thing. And so, honestly, like, and I don't know if you, if any of your sailing world listened and responded to you as well, but, you know, they might have had that kind of response out there. They're like, oh, well, you know, if I just had that boat, I could have done that. I think, I think a lot of people, yeah, it's interesting when you actually go off and you go,

[00:10:52] I think climbing has become so much more accessible where, you know, back in the day, climbing, I think, wasn't so accessible to everyone, you know, and it was scary and it was kind of forbidden. And it was this, you know, and maybe now with documentaries and you have these celebrities that are within their sport that they kind of like make it more accessible. So I think sailing is just a little bit behind that because we just recently

[00:11:19] now have like cameras on board at all times where like just two years ago, three years ago, that really wasn't the case. And so it really having cameras on board has totally changed the game. And we were just one of the first that actually put cameras on board and then, you know, did live things. That's, that's kind of what changed the game. I just happened to be like the participant in that, but it could have literally been anybody,

[00:11:47] maybe just right time, right place. Yeah. I mean, I think the technology caught up, right? You know, this, the, the Starlink thing made a huge difference. Um, you know, before that you would have had to have some serious tech, you know, kind of military level tech to be that connected. Really expensive. Right. Yeah. But you're absolutely right. I think the other thing is the, the climbing gym has obviously sort of broken that door open, if you will. Not that everybody moves outside, but they can now relate.

[00:12:17] And, um, and you know, all these things, whether it's climbing or surfing or, or sailing in your case, they have a guarded elitism to them that, you know, a lot of people don't want to give up either. And I mean, I, I kind of walk that fence a little bit of like, I still want this to be our special thing, you know? And, um, I think sailing is probably about to breach that or is trying to breach that a little bit. Oh, it's, it's crossed that barrier. There's, oh man.

[00:12:44] I remember one of my first interviews I did in 2020 and. Oh, I remember that I said something not so great about the America's cup and like the America's America's cup bros and how like, ah, they just hide behind their technology. Do they even notice sale? And the backlash I got from that was so bad that even like the guy I was seeing at the time was like, he really wanted to be on the America's cup team. Yeah. He was so mad at me.

[00:13:14] He was so mad. He was like, oh my God, you're so embarrassing. I can't believe you said that on, on, uh, on an interview. And I was like, well, what's the big deal? Like, I can't, I can't see myself, you know, in the America's cup because there really isn't that many women. I mean, this is the first, uh, next year will be the first year that they actually allow a woman on board on now these new boats and, or at least it's mandatory to have a woman on board.

[00:13:42] It's not really to get women to, to show up because that's not really the issue. It's really just trying to open up a good community space so that women want to show up because like women are super smart and they're not going to show up if they feel uncomfy. Like it's probably one of the reasons why I sailed around the world. I'm solo because I didn't have to worry about any other personalities or someone beat me down or telling me I wasn't good enough.

[00:14:09] Like the only person that's telling me I'm not good enough is myself. And I can like handle that on my own in my own brain, but having someone else like in your ear, when you're trying to do something or taking things out of your hand, it'd be like, you know, climbing, re-souling. Someone just comes up and just goes, yeah, I'm going to take this handhold from

[00:14:56] you like right now. That's probably why I do really respect solo sailing so much and really love it is because like nobody's reaching over your shoulder. And that's probably why a lot of climbers like to just, you know, they go super early in the morning and they do it solo and maybe with or without ropes. And like, Hey man, I totally get it. The last podcast we did, you know, in this one as well, because of the nature of what

[00:15:25] we're talking about, the parallels of climbing is kind of the game I've been playing. And the solo thing was a really important part of that when I first, first started talking to you, having been a soloist myself, um, not too much free soloing, but, but big wall soloing, which again, not as committing as what you did, but it has a commitment to it. That's, that's an interesting parallel, but, um, but yeah, this, this idea of like, it's all on your shoulders is, is daunting, but also that's a big part of it was for me.

[00:15:55] Like if we, if I fail, I'm not going to like give side eye to my partner who I thought was weaker or, you know, blame them or think that, well, if we, you know, these decisions had been made on the other side, it's all me. Like if I'm just, if I'm going down, I'm, I'm, it's because I blew it somehow, you know? Yeah. And I, I liked that feeling of the responsibility being all mine and not, cause I, you know, I'm like anybody, I can kind of blame other people for my own problems.

[00:16:23] Um, but that put me in this position that it was impossible to do that, you know? Yeah. When you're completely solo, you can go back and I think it's easier to reflect on like, okay, what this went wrong, this went right, this, you know, and you're right. You, you can't really blame anyone else other than yourself. Like you have to truly just focus like within yourself. And I think that that's super important. I really like that, but I think a lot of people are afraid to look within themselves. I think there's a lot of anxiety involved in that.

[00:16:53] And we talked about this before about like the, the darker spaces of our minds that kind of take over and yeah, you have to be kind of, um, okay with that darker side in your mind as a solo sailor or as a climber, because if you're not like it definitely, it will vomit out eventually. Right. Right. It'll come out this solo race that, that your book is about, by the way, congratulations. We're going to talk about your book too.

[00:17:21] Um, it's completed and, um, let me come back to that though. I forgot to congrats. I was going to do that at the beginning of the show. I forgot, but, um, you know, since that race you've, you've obviously, you know, you'll go out, I would assume and, and sail your boat by yourself, but you've been focusing on, on team racing, um, at least with a partner. So like, you know, as, as we've talked about this mindset and this darker place and everything

[00:17:47] else, and this, you know, maybe biting somebody like, you know, what have those adjustments been like, you know, you team raced beforehand, but you came back from the solo race, a different person. And so did you have to readjust how you operate on a team? And also, you know, you probably got some opportunities that you would have gotten without the resume builder of racing by yourself around the world.

[00:18:13] Um, and maybe have to think about like, well, how do I need to be, to continue to get these opportunities? What's the adjustment been like post the new call that, that came off that boat, finishing that race, the raw kind of raw one. Yeah, no, it's been, um, it's been super interesting. I still crave being offshore solo for sure. I did a double-handed race. I hadn't done a double-handed.

[00:18:41] So two people on a boat, um, I hadn't done a double-handed race in like three years or something crazy. So I did one last month and we won and it was so nice to be back. I had never sailed with this guy. I'd never even sailed on the boat. I hadn't even ever seen the boat before. It was like race day, let's go, which is really hard to do.

[00:19:08] Cause there was 50 boats on the line and these are bigger boats. And so it was, it was a really cool, it was really cold. It was in, um, the Baltic and the Baltic sea. And so you're, you're rounding a bunch of these like fjords and islands and things like that. And, and we won and it was a really cool experience because I mean, you know, you don't even know this guy and you're sailing double-handed sailing is solo half the amount of time.

[00:19:36] And I loved it. It was like the most clarifying thing. Cause I had felt for so long, like, okay, maybe I'll just stick with teams. You know, I'm, I've slowly moved into this team, uh, with team militia and. You know, then I'm back on a double-handed race course. And I was like, oh, okay, this is where I was born. I was born in this, in this double-handed world, which is kind of the training wheels version of single handing of solo racing.

[00:20:07] Um, and it's like immediate, we were slamming. We had some pretty, really rough conditions and it's like, I'm still making tea. We're slamming along and I'm still like, okay, we got to eat. We got to do everything. We have to get into our schedules. Let's get our sleep in. Let's do all the normal things. And I could tell the guy I was sailing with was like, looking at me, like, how is it possible that you're still eating and putting this all together?

[00:20:33] And I was like, well, the, the boat that I'm sailing on right now, the Amoka 60 with the team is the most violent, horrendously violent boat I've ever sailed in my entire life. The most tricky to hard, I don't know what, like how to relate it to clients. I don't, I don't climb, but it would be like the hardest pitch of your whole life where you're like upside down and then you have to magically like spider away up on climbing.

[00:21:00] That's like the Amoka 60, uh, the race boat that I sail. It's, it's like that, but you do that all day long. It just twists your mind. So going back into a boat that isn't as complicated and being able to get more into my comfort zone, which is solo and double handed, it was like, oh, what a breath of fresh. I was like, oh, okay. I know how to sail. I know how to do this because you go into a class like the Amoka 60, which is a foiling,

[00:21:30] it's a partial foiling boat. It's incredibly difficult. It tests your mind and your body the whole time. And it can really make you feel like, you know, nothing, like nothing, like, like as if they plucked you off the street as a complete civilian and put you on this really dangerous thing. And that's why I'm happy to do it as a team right now, because I can learn from these people. If I had to do this solo, I would have to train every single day for the next two years to get to where I want to be.

[00:22:00] But instead, I've been training with them for probably a total of 250 days of training with them. And it's gotten significantly faster because I can just learn off of everyone else and kind of soak up all the information. So being with the team right now, I would say is, is pure survival to stay in this super difficult class and make sure I'm picking up all the information and learning everything about it.

[00:22:28] Cause I, I'm going to say this and a lot of sailors are going to disagree, but I think it's the hardest boat to sail probably on the planet. I really, I'm going to put my name in the sand. I'm going to die on this hill. So it's good. I'm with a team right now. Well, it's fine. No, no, none of my audience are going to have any, any state to disagree with you. So we're good. This is a sailing podcast. Maybe you'd start getting emails, but we're just going, yes, that sounds hard.

[00:22:57] It sounds really hard. It sounds really hard. Um, it's, it's only slight, it only broke me once last year. Like that was the only time I've ever felt broken by a boat. So, um, what's the name of your partner for, for the Baltic 500? Uh, Matthias. Yeah. Yeah. Matthias. It was on a boat called Red. Did you vet that relationship at all?

[00:23:27] Or, or in terms of just like trying to find out about who this guy is, or does he have a reputation? Is it easy to figure out if you guys might connect versus just, you know, shaking hands before you set sail? So he had sailed to the, the skiffer, the boat that I work as a team has sailed with him before they're both German. And this race started in, in Kiel in Germany. And so Boris didn't have enough time to do the race.

[00:23:57] So that's how I got hooked in. So I became Boris's, um, replacement. So I kind of showed up, helped get the boat set up, took some things off, put some things on the boat. Um, and then, yeah, then we pretty much raced the, like the next day. So it was pretty quick. Um, I would say that the vetting process normally happens. Normally you, you train with your partner beforehand, especially for this type of racing.

[00:24:25] But I kind of was like, okay, it's fine. I have been racing this horribly difficult boat. Um, so this should be a little bit easier. And it actually was great because Matthias was really focused, like pretty much the whole time. Like we've, we had a problem on the boat. We kind of knew how to solve it anyway. And I think my time working with the team has also helped my team building skills.

[00:24:53] But you know, when you're get tired, of course, I like got my normal self where I get too competitive and then I start, I, I know what I need to say, but none of the words come out. And a lot of the people that I sail with in the Mocha class, I don't have to do a lot of talking mainly because the boat is so noisy that you can't really talk to anybody. And a lot of them speak only French or mainly French.

[00:25:19] So there's, I would say that the communication that happens on the Mocha is, is a lot of silence talking or like pointing or talking on headphones because it's so noisy. And so going back to where we would have, you know, quick conversations, okay, well, let's do this and do this. And oh, should we change this? It was kind of nice bringing back like my voice into the sailing world that's been quiet for a year now. Yeah.

[00:25:46] Well, Germans aren't known for their chit chat anyway. So it's probably just a lot of business. It's business as usual, which I don't mind. Don't get me wrong. I love a business as usual. I'm, if I have time off when I'm working, I'm sleeping. Like I, I'm a, I'm a sleeper. I'm not going to sit up and chat on my off schedule because like sleep is so precious.

[00:26:12] And I think people realize that really quickly when they get into the professional world, they like try to stay up because they want to like enjoy the whole process. And I'm like, if you don't go to bed now, when something breaks at midnight and it's in the middle of your off schedule, you're going to be really upset about it. So enjoy the sleep while you can. So switching over to the book, uh, I've gotten a copy of it and read it.

[00:26:36] And, um, I felt like we, we did a really good job in the previous interview of covering, you know, a lot of the highlights and low lights and things like that of the book. Um, but of course it's a much larger story and, uh, the nuances is, is kind of interesting. And one of the things in there that I think I kind of had on my list to talk about, we never got around to it was more about the connectivity. This, this thing we opened this, this podcast with talking about being connected out there

[00:27:05] and, and one of the first people to do that on one of these solo trips in the book, you know, there was a, you were much more, um, ambivalent and, or shutting it off a lot, you know, and which is interesting because we, as, and I say we, cause I was following you. That's how this all sort of came about. Um, and a lot of my friends were a lot of people I know were, um, I, I shot it out to a ton of people. Um, but we only see, you know, what you sort of give us.

[00:27:33] And then there's the, the in-between time doesn't seem to exist because we just get the next update, right? Yep. And so, can you, I mean, can you talk a little bit about the sort of good and bad of the connectivity? It certainly changes the, the solo experience, which, you know, you don't, you hadn't done one without it. So it's not like you have a comparison to do with, you know, being totally disconnected.

[00:28:00] Um, but there were many times that you, you, yeah, it wasn't time for it or your team wanted you to, and you were like, I am not doing that right now. I'm not in the right headspace, things like that. You know, talk about that balance and, and how you sort of. You know, got used to it and, and dealt with it while you were on the boat. And again, this is first light in the, in the solo race around the world. Yeah. I think it was, it was pretty difficult, especially in the beginning.

[00:28:28] Um, my media manager in the beginning of the race within the first 24 hours was like, okay, we're going to post every single day. And I was really sick. I had food poisoning super bad. And also I was tacking and having to be able to stack a bunch. And so just like depleting my energy stores and then, you know, getting a call from Lydia was like, so we're going to post every single day now. And I was like, no, but she was 100% correct.

[00:28:56] Like her strategy on that was like perfection. She, she pushed me at just the right time, even though I was like, not ridiculously happy about it. And I think that the connectivity, I wanted to talk in the book less about the Instagram because everyone saw the Instagram, or at least a lot of the people saw the Instagram. And I love the Instagram.

[00:29:22] I actually just recently went back and watched it, um, a couple months ago. And it's like watching somebody else. Like I would follow that girl. Like she's, she's sick. She was, she like inspired me. And it's weird to think that it's me because I have changed massively and good, bad, the ugly, the whole nine yards. I think I've changed a lot within the last two, three years.

[00:29:50] And as a human, as a person, as an athlete. And I think the media, I had a very good relationship with the media, like with social media, um, maybe not in the beginning, but as I got used to it and started to learn it and started to understand it and find it as a creative outlet to keep me busy. Cause there's a lot of time in a 24 hour day.

[00:30:18] So you, you make a video, you know, you kind of think up the idea. So that's, you know, spread out over the course of the day. You're kind of thinking about it, but you're doing other things. You're navigating, you're working. And then you get to this point where you, you're like, okay, now it's time to create it. So then you create it. That takes, I don't know, an hour. And then you, you post it and you send it out and then you turn off Starlink and you move on with your day.

[00:30:45] It didn't take that much energy, but what it gave me was this beautiful space that I could really show what was going on, but also show my artistic side that I don't really get to show or really use in my day-to-day life as a, as an athlete. That's another little thing in the, while reading the book is, um, and you, again, you're a story

[00:31:14] when you're telling your stories and stories are not about the downtime. You know, we don't tell every minute of like the three weeks in base camp before someone launched up on, you know, some mind boggling climb because there was nothing happening, you know, lots of Uno or whatever. But, you know, it was cool to read the book and, and, you know, there's all these, these, you know, incidences, whatever that are worth talking about.

[00:31:41] And then there's this like a mention of like two weeks later, this happened or whatever. And I'm like, wow, two weeks of just sitting on the boat or, you know, doing the work, getting along, you know, what, let me ask you that. Like, what did, what does that downtime look like in terms of, yeah, you, you did your video for an hour, you've got some work to do. Was there a lot of just like contemplation time? I mean, I'm sure there's always something to do, but what does it look like the, the, the day after day?

[00:32:10] Because I think that's really fascinating actually. I think that the day after day, I think would, if you are not in the right headspace, the day after day could make you go crazy. And I also think that in our, in our society, we don't give ourselves the chance to actually be bored with our lives, which then subsequently doesn't allow us to stay present with what we're doing. Like, you know, think about pre cell phones.

[00:32:38] So pre having the internet, you know, at our fingertips, life took a lot of time to do. Like if you wanted to call somebody, right, you first had to get their phone number and then you had to like find a phone, whether or not that was the house phone or a pay phone. Oh, it's a pay phone. Now you got to find a coin. You got to, you know, you got to ask mom and dad, or you got to find one on the street, you know, just to do these menial tasks took time.

[00:33:08] And when you take away the phone, you realize that that, that time is like, you know, boredom time, but it's actually quite precious too. I think that we feel like we never have any time, but we're always on our phones, which should actually make things easier and more efficient. But we spend so much time distracting ourselves with our phones, being on Instagram or checking

[00:33:33] our email every five minutes, or does somebody text me or being so available for everyone else that until you actually like push the phone away, push the internet away. Like I, I wrote, I wrote every day in a journal on two different journals. Um, I read a lot of books.

[00:33:57] I listened to so much music and just would put the music on in the morning and just have it going throughout the day. The same way that you would just, you know, put a couple CDs into a player. And I think that's, what's so beautiful about the whole journey was that these tiny little moments of, you know, what we would say were boredom were actually more important than the posting on Instagram.

[00:34:22] The posting on Instagram was just taking the creative process that was already kind of building over, you know, 130 days and then just putting out a 30 second clip. Some, some of the days I, I'd only put out a nine second clip, but that wasn't the entirety of 24 hours. That 24 hours was spent mending things in the boat. It was fixing things. It was maintenance.

[00:34:50] It was personal maintenance, taking care of my body and my mind. It was eating. It was cooking. I mean, everything takes time. It's not like I could order a pizza if I wanted food, you know, you really had to take a moment and really focus on making water where, you know, your water is coming from salt water. And so you have to be able to produce your water. And that takes, everything takes time.

[00:35:15] And you learn that you have so much time when you just take out a little bit of this device that is actually supposed to make your life easier, but technically it's just sucking the life out of you. And I know it firsthand. I've been on land for two years and it is by far sucking the life out of me and I can recognize it. That like, yeah, well, I mean, recognizing it is a great word because we are all reckoning

[00:35:42] with it as time goes by, you know, and it's only been a few years, you know, that's the other thing is it seems like we've always had this thing. And, you know, even a lot people a lot younger than I am, including you, you know, had a prior existence before it, before it was there and we don't even think about it anymore. And I was thinking about too, we have an EV, you know, a electric car and everybody's question is always like, well, how long does it take to charge? You know, how long does it take to charge?

[00:36:13] Doesn't that suck? You got to sit there for this amount of time. And I always joke like, you know, what you did in your gas cars, you got home a half hour earlier than me and then you got on your phone. So, you know, like if you're really worried about saving this 30 minutes, like, you know, if you rushed home on your gas powered car that you could gas up so easily so you could sit on your phone. I just sit on my phone while I charge. It's like, I'll even go.

[00:36:38] It all kind of, I've never like related to something so much in my whole life. And I'm, I'm totally guilty of this too. I have 100% been rushing around my life to make everything kind of work out. All my passions work out. And just recently, like very, very recently I've recognized, I think also living in Europe really, really, really helps because if you push harder, they'll push harder against you.

[00:37:04] So let me drop a little, it's not really even a quote. There's, there's not much to the quote itself. But what it's talking about, I think is what, what was important to me. It's a line about finding peace in the chaos. And that really resonated with, with me as, as, as a climber, you know, formerly an alpinist. I don't climb that kind of climbing much or at all anymore, but I talked to a lot of people about it.

[00:37:33] And several of, of the folks I've talked about it have expressed this idea, you know, where this mountain, and it's different than rock climbing because this mountain is moving and changing, um, all the time that you're on it. Um, it, it may or may not have a, a malevolent entity trying to kill you. Um, or it just might be circumstance because, you know, nature is, is somewhat ambivalent to

[00:37:59] our existence, but it's this, you know, they've expressed this feeling that the, the, the thrill of it or the accomplishment of it or the power of it is that you feel at least in this small bubble where you're taming that and you're finding passage through it. And that is exciting and it's, you know, enlightening and it, and it changes you. Um, and so when I read that about the boat and, and, and you being on the ocean and it's

[00:38:29] such even a more dynamic situation than what I think climbers even on very active mountains deal with, um, you know, no one is just there like moving you all the time or whatever. Um, I would hope not. I mean, aside from storms and everything else, I mean, it's, I have plenty of friends who kayak and I've, I've never really gotten into kayaking because my brain doesn't deal with that very well, this constant movement and how slow climbing is comparatively, but nevertheless,

[00:38:58] it's this idea that you're, you're in that. And, and I think that if you do find peace in there, it's even more profound because of what you're sort of dealing with, but, you know, I think the line to, you said, I hope people have a way to find this, you know, themselves or experience. I think you just wanted people to experience this, the profundity of what you were experiencing. And it was towards the end of the race, you know, where you were, you'd, you'd settled in,

[00:39:27] you'd, you'd, um, what, what was the line? You, you, you weren't thinking about land or something like that anymore. You were, you were fully in. So can you, you know, expand a little bit about that feeling? Cause I think it's such a crux part of what you did and what you do every day when you're, when you're on these boats, you know, even this, this, uh, this one you're on now that's feels so out of control, but you guys just hold onto it. Right. I mean, it's like, you know, a galloping horse that you're all hanging onto kind of. It's so true.

[00:39:57] I think the, it's actually one of the reasons why I got hired by Milizia, by Boris. He kind of saw that I could find the peace and the absolute chaos. And so that's actually how I ended up getting hired for the team. And, and now Boris and I actually, uh, share an apartment and he'll ask me every once in a while, like, how do you, how do you do it? You know, when it's so chaotic and everything's going crazy and, and, uh, Amoka 60 is the way

[00:40:27] that they work kind of the same way that it was like when I was in the Southern ocean, you know, you spend a lot of time inside, you're kind of like a pilot. And I said, the most important thing is going outside because we can get kind of sucked into our bubbles the same way that we can on social media, the same way that we can just, we can, as humans, we just, we have such an ability to focus on something that we forget that there's like a bigger picture here and that there's something more important.

[00:40:56] And really that's, I mean, we're going so fast around the planet nowadays compared to what they were doing in like the 1960s when they first started solo, um, nonstop around the planet. So, and we can take a little piece out of the handbook that those guys had because those guys were insane. They went around the globe with no technology at all, nothing, zero, nothing, not even a communication device.

[00:41:24] And one of the guys, Bernard Matissier, um, the way that he communicated with, um, like cargo ships was that he got close enough to cargo ships, which were like a thousand feet. And he was like this little 40 foot foot, but, and he would take a slingshot with a little piece of paper and then he would slingshot it into the cargo ship. And that was how he was communicating. This wasn't that long ago. This is the 1960s. It really wasn't that long ago.

[00:41:51] And so I, I read a lot. What do they say? Like need snicker bars? Like what? Call my wife. Call my mom. Like call my wife. I'm alive. This was well before trackers. You know, this, we didn't have any trackers. There was no satellites. There was nothing. There was nothing going on. So, you know, I mean, there was a guy that died on that race, um, that they did. This was like the first solo nonstop race around the world, which is now considered the

[00:42:20] Vendee, which is now the Vendee globe. And so it's kind of this insane way of looking at it. Like if you were to take yourself and put yourself in the 1960s and Bernard Matissier, when he's refusing to put technology on the boat because it's super heavy and he's like, I'd rather put food. Like this only makes sense. Why would I put this stupid technology on board that weighs 500 pounds? But he was so content.

[00:42:44] He was so happy that the story of Bernard Matissier is he decided not to finish the race. He didn't finish the race. He was winning. And he got to like the kind of the latitude of like Uruguay. And he just took a right turn and went to Tahiti. Like that's, so he went one and a half times around the planet. Just, just quit the race. Didn't care. Like his wife divorced him.

[00:43:12] I mean, it's this insane story. That's kind of like an idol of mine, you know, where, and it's so funny because it didn't become an idol of mine until after I finished the race, because I started to read his book and a couple other people, like a couple other crazy solo sailors. And I started to realize that my experience was not ridiculously different than their experience, except I had technology on board and they didn't.

[00:43:40] But I still spent so much time looking outside at the clouds. And that was how I could draw myself out of like really bad situations or wanting to reconnect was the reconnection point was making sure that I was focusing on the world around me. And this benevolent creature became my friend where the ocean wasn't trying to hurt me. I was just having to tiptoe a little bit around its, its area.

[00:44:07] You know, it's, it's, you have to show it her respect. And I think that people forget that. And now with technology, you know, we're going faster and faster around the planet that we're, we're forgetting that. And we're, we're barely seeing the world around us. And now after going around the planet solo and nonstop, it's made me appreciate a lot more of everywhere I go.

[00:44:36] Like I'll just stand outside someplace and like smell the air. Because I think when I was walking from place to place, I realized I wasn't actually, you know, smelling things. You know, you're seeing, but it's almost like I had turned off my nose because you just, you know, it just seemed like an unnecessary thing, you know, to actually do. But now I'm like standing under trees, which there's no trees offshore and really appreciating this world that we live in.

[00:45:06] And really that comes from the learnings and the teachings that first light my boat had given me and also being on the water for that long. So I wasn't really, I was never afraid of the ocean. And at one point I definitely wanted to turn into Bernard Matissier and take a right turn. I was, I was just rolling through that because that's in the book. Yeah. So many little, there's so much more. I mean, I was praising our, our interview, but there's like, they're, they're great companions

[00:45:35] because there's so much more. And that's what you, you did. You wanted to turn and go, I mean, and, you know, and just be like, yeah, I'm done with the race because I think, I mean, it felt like, yeah, the, the race part of it now was conflicting with all these other feelings. You know, this pressure of like this arbitrary thing that I'm doing really it's, I have to finish in the same spot. I started for some reason, because I paid a bunch of money and people are paying, you know, for my scene. So yeah. My whole family showing up.

[00:46:05] If I don't finish. Yeah. I mean, that's so cool that you had that same moment in a way. It's so crazy. It's so crazy. And I, I, I wonder if we as athletes or even as just civilians, as humans, if we made decisions on how we actually felt instead of, you know, what other people would think about us or judgments

[00:46:33] that we have on ourselves or other people have on us, I think the world could probably be a really cool, fun place because we would actually be going off of what our hearts want. And our hearts really, you know, I think that they're really quite powerful. And if we thought with our hearts, maybe we would take care of our planet a little bit more. Maybe we wouldn't be thinking so much about like money or like having the most amount of resources,

[00:47:01] you know, I got to have the most amount of resources. I have to have more resources and money than my neighbor. I, and this is why I recommend to everyone to go and go off sailing away from land because when you're offshore, there's something so beautiful about it that you, you're like, why wouldn't we protect this? Why, why would we let people destroy this?

[00:47:27] You know, and, and like, why wouldn't we, we put our foot down and go absolutely not. Like, this is what we're breathing. This is everything. This is our livelihood. This is our future children's livelihood. We should be protecting this. And you see a lot of people that choose like financial stability over our home, our planet. And really, when you go offshore, um, you really understand how powerful the ocean is and she's

[00:47:56] going to win against us. Like every time, no matter how much money or, or whatnot, I mean, the ocean's always going to win. She's more powerful. You want, what, one of the, the final things in the book that you talk about is selling first light. And first light is, is the name of the book. It's the name of your boat, um, for that race.

[00:48:21] And you end up selling it to someone who, um, is another woman that, and I think that was important to you. Um, you can elaborate on that. Uh, she doesn't have the, the financial means to get the boat to her. And so you decide to sail with her halfway around the world, right. To Australia. That in the context of what we talked about last time and of, of this, this period after

[00:48:46] the race of being lost, of not, uh, really understanding your place on land anymore. Um, but that seems like it was a, like a leap past that a little bit. Can you talk about, um, the decision to sell the boat and, uh, to this woman and to sail across the world with her? Oh, I had two options. The boat, my sponsors gave me the boat as almost like, yeah, they gave you the boat. Yeah. They gave me a boat. They gave me first light.

[00:49:16] There's a lot about these sponsors in the book too. That's just, I'm not going to talk about it here, but it's fascinating. And I mean, you, you, you definitely some stars aligned for you with all that stuff, but it's really a cool part of that story. But anyhow, so you end up with the boat given to you, but by these people. Yeah. So they give me first light as a parting gift as like here, this is, this is, and it was

[00:49:42] like, the deal was I could sell her or I could keep her and keep sailing her. But that, you know, everything was on me and I had no money. So there was two things I had no money and I knew that I wouldn't be able to afford her and give her the proper care that she really deserved and needed.

[00:50:03] And two, I had been feeling like she was still at a lot of life to give and that I wanted to be able to pass her on to somebody else because first light had gotten passed to me. So I felt it was only necessary to kind of pass her on to somebody else. And I really wanted it to be a woman. And pretty much I was willing to wait no matter what. And I think we waited about six months.

[00:50:31] I think it was like six months, maybe less. I think it was four months until Elizabeth had kind of shown some interest. And then she had gone back to the boat a few times, which was in Spain. And I was like, I don't know why she just keeps on going back. But like, you know, like shit or get off the pot. Like, what are we doing? And I knew that I wanted it to be a woman.

[00:50:56] I knew that she had some inkling that she wanted to do her own racing with the boat or start a program or something. And then I just, I just set up a meeting with her and we FaceTimed. And I remember that September I was like, okay, so like, what's the deal? Like, you're either in or you're out. Like, that's it. And she was like, well, I don't have the funds to be able to get the boat to Australia because it costs a lot of money to ship the boat. Like, tons of money.

[00:51:23] After COVID, I mean, it just became almost impossible to ship even a 40-foot boat. It's seen. I have to tell you. And I was like, well, why don't we just sail her? I mean, the boat's got plenty of equipment. I mean, we had outfitted her to be able to handle, you know, one and a half, two times around the planet because we wanted to have everything in place. I mean, we, we had, she was well loved. First Light was. And that was it.

[00:51:52] So Elizabeth said, yeah, of course, let's go. And we flew to Spain and then we left December 1st. So from like September, the decision to leave to go halfway around the planet kind of set up the boat. I moved to, moved, sorry, moved to Spain for a little while. And then that was it.

[00:52:16] We sailed together and it wasn't easy because I knew First Light as First Light always spoke to me. And when Elizabeth was around, you know, she didn't speak, First Light didn't speak to me as much. And that was, it was good. It was a good timing to, to let First Light go. But yeah. That's all I got to say about that. It's going to make me sad.

[00:52:49] Yeah. That's, that's pretty interesting. The, the relationship that you have with the boat. Again, also very highlighted in the book. You've spent the last few years just pursuing whatever opportunities have come to you. Can you talk just a little bit about that then? You know, this clearly opened doors for you. There was some fame involved and, you know, what you did was, was incredible.

[00:53:14] You were the first American woman to complete one of these solo nonstop races around the world. You know, all that's going to be notoriety. And part of the reason you did it was to, you know, to show off your skills that you can do something like this, you know, following up the, the Bermuda race that was half two-handed and half solo, you know, to really just put an exclamation point on your abilities. How has that been?

[00:53:42] I mean, have the doors opened, you know, what have you felt in terms of, uh, of the benefits of not just finishing this race, but also notably coming in second? What, what, what has happened since then? And have you felt, um, that you moved the, that you moved the sort of line a little bit further, um, as far as people like you being, being welcomed into, uh, into sailing? When I first started writing the book, I wasn't in like a great place.

[00:54:11] And so I've, I think I've rewritten this book like three times at this point in the last two years. And my poor editor, she's been really patient. Thank God. Oh, she has been fabulous. Um, because I mean, uh, I, I think about eight months ago, I set up a phone call with her and I was like, I hate the book. I want to trash it. And she was like, uh, no, please don't.

[00:54:37] And so then we spent like two months just making it more of what I wanted. And I realized that when I was writing the book, because I was going through all this turmoil of always being at everyone else's disposal for everything, interviews or speaking engagements or publicity events or sailing or corporate events or whatever it was, I wasn't doing anything for myself.

[00:55:04] And everything that I had done before then, before I had gone around the planet had been for first light for, for me, for my friends, for sailing. And now all of a sudden that was like completely trashed and like gone and my whole, the life before it's like the life before going around the planet. And there's the life after. And I'm really happy with the way the book is now because I got to a much nicer place in

[00:55:33] my life now that the book reflects that and reflects still the good moments of, you know, the around the world race. I think I came back from that race, like resentful that I was back on land and not ridiculously happy about it. And then also bombarded by people that I didn't really get, I didn't get enough time to kind of like decompress and really understand what I want.

[00:56:04] And now that I've had what, two years to figure it out, I'm in a such a better place that now I can make much better decisions on what I actually want out of life. And this is why when I came back, we didn't immediately like make a movie was because I said, I had said, no, I don't want to do a movie when I don't even know what the story is. I wanted to write the book because I wanted to be able to kind of figure it out and make it into a cathartic event.

[00:56:32] And the book became almost my therapist through these last two years. I've cried. I still, I still cry when I like, I've had to read the book like a thousand times and I still cry in the book and it's, and it's literally me, but it's, I see it as almost like an older sibling. That's like watching like their younger sibling, like graduate college.

[00:57:00] You know, it's like, I'm proud of you, honey. You've done great. You will survive this. I promise you everything's going to be okay. Like the final chapter that we were just talking about, I was in a really dark place when I wrote that chapter and I wanted to keep that chapter the way that it was because it, it is written in the time, like in the time when I had to sell, um, first light.

[00:57:27] And I read that and I go, oh my God, it's like, it's so broken. I'm glad that I wrote it during because you're reflecting on this. I'm only 32. I'm writing my memoir while I'm living it. That's crazy. Most people, I feel like, you know, write memoirs when they're sixties or 70, 80, you know, after they've had plenty of time to reflect, this is like a wound that is wide open.

[00:57:57] And, um, so yeah, I still get quite emotional with it and I'm happy that I wrote the book. I'm happy that I rewrote the book. I'm really happy with how the book turned out. So I'm like, that's why I keep looking over. She's right here. So she's my, she's my princess and we, we survived it together. No matter how many interviews and how much crazy stuff, honestly, like.

[00:58:27] None of that really matters to much as much as this matters to me. I could die tomorrow and at least you'd know it, you know, you'd be like, ah, okay. This is what she truly, truly cared about in her life. This is, this was everything. Like that's, this is, if I was to leave the planet tomorrow, this is what I want to say.

[00:59:03] All right, folks, thanks for listening. And thanks again to Cole for coming back on the show. She was just lovely and gracious about, uh, all the responses that she got from that first Enorma cast. And I think the Enorma nation loves Cole Brower. As she talked about, she's been racing with a team on a very high tech boat that I can't even understand. And the footage from that has been amazing. They just did a transatlantic race.

[00:59:28] And what I really love is the pictures of the crew because Cole is just a lot smaller than the rest of the people on the crew. And she just has to go toe to toe and make up for her size with all that grit. Anyhow, you can follow Cole on Instagram at Cole Brower Ocean Racing. And of course, go check out her book, First Light Sailing Solo, but not alone, wherever you get your books. She's also on tour to promote the book.

[00:59:55] So you can find that information on Instagram over there at Cole Brower Ocean Racing. Okay, folks, it's pretty much fall here in the Northern Hemisphere here in North America. So it's time to get past the summer doldrums, get it, and get out there, have some fun, and of course, check your knots.

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