Johannesburg - It has not really sunk in for Kirsten Neuschäfer, that she is the first woman ever to win a solo round the world race.
“My goal was to win the race, and it feels good to have won. However I set out in this race first as a skipper, sailor, yachts person and an equal in the sport. The fact that I happen to be a woman as well has not meant much to me in terms of the sport.
“All of us competitors out there would have had similar obstacles to deal with irrespective of gender. I was just happy to have been a part of it.”
The Port Elizabeth born sailor made history two weeks ago when she became the first woman to win the Golden Globe race.
Neuschäfer and 15 other competitors, who were all men, set off from Les Sables-d’Olonne, France on September 4, 2022, with the aim of making it around the world via the five Great Capes before returning to the coastal town in the west of France.
Entrants race solo, non-stop, and in boats that are reminiscent of the ‘Golden Age’ of solo sailing – the yachts have to be designed before 1988 and are without electronic instruments or autopilots.
The race is based on the 1968-69 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race which saw Sir Robin Knox-Johnston become the first person to circumnavigate the globe, sailing solo on his boat Suhaili without stopping.
By the time the South African Neuschäfer crossed the line that Thursday, only two other sailors were on course to complete the race without stopping.
After finishing with an official time of 233 days, 20 hours, 43 minutes and 47 seconds, Neuschäfer said her boat – Minnehaha – had been her “companion,” throughout the adventure.
“Most of the time it was great. I enjoyed the sailing, I enjoyed the boat, I loved being at sea, I loved my solitude - and there were many moments when I felt incredibly privileged to be the only person within a radius of a thousand miles to enjoy a beautiful sunset, or exhilarating moments of the boat surfing down waves, or seeing whales and dolphins or whatever great things I was experiencing. There were also difficult moments - but those are quickly forgotten, and it's the good things that leave the biggest impression.
“Sure, there were a few moments when I missed land, human company, fresh food or that I felt the strain of heavy weather or just the length of the race, but they were few and far between.”
She said it took her about a year to prepare for the gruelling event.
“I'd say 80% of the race is in the preparation. I spent a full year working with a very skilled person to refit and reinforce the boat - and we took no short cuts. I knew I had a good boat. I had done a lot of the work myself, I had a good understanding of how to fix potential problems at sea. I also sailed about 13 000 nautical miles with that boat before the race started.
“It takes willpower and determination to keep going, especially when the going gets tough. I really wanted to do this race - it was my dream and my goal - and I kept on reminding myself of that.”
“I was lucky to have had many, many people who encouraged me to keep going, and although I could not communicate with the outside world during the race, knowing that people were rooting for me, gave me the will to keep going.”
Preparation for Neuschäfer included months of research and training at sea.
“I started with doing research into what boats were permitted and choosing the one I believed to be a potential winner - both strong and fast. But as it was an old boat, it needed a lot of work. We partially rebuilt the top layer of the deck, the bulwarks, replaced and strengthened the entire rig, redid the wiring and some of the plumbing, replaced the engine gearbox and realigned the engine, replaced hatches and portholes and many other jobs, so I learned a lot about boat building.
“And then I sailed from Canada to Cape Town and from Cape Town to France - that gave me a lot of training time at sea, to get good at sailing that particular boat and to figure out how to do certain manoeuvres alone, sleep patterns, to figure out how much food to take etc.”
Being at sea for 233 days is no easy feat. Neuschäfer says she had several challenges and difficulties to deal with.
“One of the mentally most challenging things was dealing with being becalmed - drifting without wind and without making headway. In a race, that's really tough, knowing the others might be making headway, and there's nothing you can do but wait for the wind to return. It's also tough on the boat and gear because you try to keep moving without much wind pressure in the sails, so they slam a lot.
“Dealing with heavy weather - storm conditions - you need to know when it's time to stop racing and start deploying storm tactics to keep the boat safe and avoid breakage. And then if the sky was overcast, navigation became difficult, as if you could not see the sun or the stars, moon or planet, your position worked out on dead reckoning would be less and less accurate.”
The event required Neuschäfer and her competitors to sail without GPS and other technology.
Asked what that was like, the SA sailor said: “Once you start to trust your ability to navigate by sextant and compass only, it actually becomes a real joy. Only when multiple days pass without seeing the sun it became trickier - but even then, most of the time we were in the middle of the ocean with thousands of miles of water around us, so not knowing the exact position was not really a problem. On approach to land one had to be more accurate about getting good sights, as land is of course a danger.”
Not only did Neuschäfer achieve legendary status by winning the Golden Globe race, but during her journey, she also managed to rescue a Finnish sailor whose boat had sunk in the South Indian Ocean.
“I was informed via satellite comms by the race headquarters that Tapio Lehtinen's boat had sunk and that he was in his life raft - (modern communication via satellite was of course allowed in emergency situations) and that I was the closest other boat to him.
“I immediately did all I could to get to him as quickly as possible - which meant putting as much sail up as the boat could handle and pushing her as hard as I could, staying at the helm throughout the night and hand steering, until he was in sight. It was hard to spot his little life raft in the swell, and I really only spotted it once I was within a couple of miles. He had been waiting all night, so he was ready to throw me a line as soon as I was close enough.
“We could then get his raft alongside my boat and he could climb aboard. Then I knew at least he was safe. The next thing was to get him onto the cargo ship that had diverted course.
“That was a moment of adrenaline to get close enough to a big ship in the middle of the southern Indian ocean for the ship's crew to be able to throw a line to us, but without getting so close that I risked damaging my own boat.
“Once we had a line from the ship, we tied it to his raft and he got back into the raft. I cut the lines on my end so that the raft was free and the ship's crew pulled him towards the rope ladder from where he could climb up onto their deck while I moved away from the ship and then continued my journey.”
Asked what helped her get over the finish line of such a gruelling race, Neuschäfer said it was knowing that there were people out there who believed in her.
“Even though I was alone, I knew many were with me in thought. What also helped was to tell myself to just get through one day at a time, to think of the whole race and the enormity of the undertaking is too daunting, but breaking things down into bite-sized chunks, little milestones and to overcome obstacles as they arose, one at a time, made it seem doable.”
Following her win, Neuschäfer also had a special message for all South Africans.
“My proudest moment to date in my life was to cross over the finish line while waving the South African flag - and it's a moment I'll never forget. Even more special that it happened on Freedom Day.”
“My message to South Africans is don't give up on your dreams. They can be made into reality if you're willing to give it all you've got, work hard and persevere.”