Sailor Cole Brauer, 29, Becomes First U.S. Female to Race Solo Across the Globe

"Thank you to everyone that came together and made this process possible," Brauer wrote on Instagram on Thursday

Sailor Cole Brauer is making history!

On Thursday, Brauer, 29, from Long Island, New York, shared a post on Instagram marking her big finish after she became the first U.S. female to race solo around the world.

"Amazing finish!!!! So stoked! Thank you to everyone that came together and made this process possible. 😭😍🌈," a post on the account was captioned alongside a pic showing her standing on the side of her yacht First Light while waving sparklers in Spain.

Brauer popped a bottle of champagne in another Instagram Story photo, which the Regatta Rescue account captioned, "She's back!!"

Brauer's media manager Lydia Mullan also kept followers updated on Instagram, writing on the sailor's account while documenting the historic finish, "Cole's back on dry land!! THANK YOU ALL for tuning in, for being here with us for the past four months, for being such amazing supporters of this campaign. We love you."

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Of the 16 skippers in the inaugural Global Solo Challenge, Brauer was the only female and the youngest. At 5 feet, 2 inches and 100 lbs., she was also the smallest.

“To make it out here as a hundred-pound girl is a dream come true,” she told PEOPLE last month.

Brauer and First Light set sail from A Coruña, Spain, on Oct. 29, 2023. She traveled down the west African coast, rounding South Africa's Cape of Good Hope, before heading to the Indian Ocean, where she rounded Cape Leeuwin in Australia before setting out across the Pacific toward South America. Brauer covered 27,000 miles in the race in just over four months.

On Jan. 26, she hit what is considered the “Everest” of her career by rounding Chile’s Cape Horn, surviving the notoriously deadly Drake Passage, the turbulent strait connecting the Pacific and Atlantic between Cape Horn and the South Shetland Islands, just above Antarctica.

While speaking to PEOPLE last month, Brauer recalled the moment 15-foot waves crashed over the deck of her 40-foot racing yacht in the Indian Ocean.

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She explained how the usually trustworthy boat’s autopilot feature had broken down, forcing her to steer the shaky tiller with her legs while also manning the lines of two sails with each arm. “I'm trying to get rid of the sails because I can't control the boat,” Brauer recalled of the harrowing experience in December.

“But I can't leave the helm,” she went on. “It's like driving a car on the highway and you don't have an accelerator or brakes. All you've got is this loose steering wheel. I was free-falling down waves, going so fast, I hit the maximum speed I've ever hit on this boat, just flying and then free-falling.”

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The incident became more challenging due to her suffering a possibly cracked rib.

“Every movement is this shooting pain,” she remembered, adding that it took her "two days to resolve the issue," but she "fixed it" eventually.

“It’s not like you can quit,” she said. “You're in the middle of the ocean. There is no quitting. No one's going to come and save you. So it’s like, ‘Suck it up. Fix the problem.’ In the end, it's just you. You have to keep moving forward.”

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