2023-04-28 07:11:00
She was the only woman involved in the mythical odyssey, on September 4, 2022, at the start of the Golden Globe Race in Les Sables-d’Olonne. Yes, Kirsten Neuschäfer really wanted to wrestle with it, this world tour promising more than seven months of sea and solitude on a ship of less than 11 meters, without the slightest technological aid to reproduce the navigation of the ancients, the Bernard Moitessier and Robin Knox-Johnston, hero of the first edition of the race in 1968. And here is the South African today, not only the only one but also the first: she crossed the line this Thursday, April 27 at 9:43 p.m., triumphant after 235 days on the crest of the waves.
No sailor before her had dominated a race around the world. At 40, Kirsten Neuschäfer writes her name on the list of winners of one of the rarest circumnavigations, the 1968 race having only been revived in 2018 for a second edition won by the Frenchman Jean-Luc Van den Heede, in one just under 212 days. At 73, the sailor had outstripped the four remaining competitors out of the eighteen at the start. This year, there were only three in the race out of sixteen contenders, which is to say the feat achieved by Kirsten Nauschäfer.
At 22, crossing Africa by bike
Adventure is in the lady’s genes. Sailing around the world was his father’s dream, never realized. But if Kirsten Neuschäfer has piloted small dinghies on the lakes around her home in the Pretoria region since childhood, it is on another mount that she will experience her first long-distance emotions. On a bicycle precisely, when she prides herself, at 22, on traveling the African continent from north to south.
His entourage tries hard to dissuade him, promising him the end of his journey as soon as he crosses the Moroccan border, his country of departure. But Kirsten refuses to listen to her own doubts and goes for it. “It’s the most fabulous experience I’ve hadshe said before her circumnavigation, with a multitude of wonderful encounters, simple people who opened their doors to me, shared their meals, always gave me the energy to continue. » After almost a year of pedaling and 15,000 km of swallowing, finishing his epic at the southern tip of Africa, it is the ocean where his gaze is lost that calls him.
She began ferrying boats for a South African builder, then broadened her palette by joining adventurer Skip Novak’s team in 2015. She took part in expeditions to Antarctica, South Georgia and Patagonia. It also brings teams from National Geographic or the British BBC for documentary series on the ecosystems of these distant lands. A collective work that fills his luggage with superb memories, but does not quench his thirst for solo travel. Because the navigator likes nothing less than to come face to face with herself, nature and the elements with which she enters into communion.
A rescue on the way
The Golden Globe Race, which she heard about during the revival of the race in 2018, quickly became obvious. The retro style of the event, without the Formula 1 equipment of today’s sea couriers, suits it perfectly. You still have to find the right traveling companion, this boat under 36 feet (11 meters) and built before 1988 as required by the regulations.
She finds it in Newfoundland, just before the Covid-19 pandemic. A Cape George 36 cruising monohull, built right in 1988 and christened Memory haha. Its cost is modest, but it needs a major renovation. She is scheduled for Bermuda, but when the skipper transfers the boat, she has to stop much earlier, in Nova Scotia. Impossible to go further. It will take a lot of marine solidarity to refurbish the boat at the local yard, in time to bring it back first to Africa, then to the start in Les Sables-d’Olonne.
“She is amazing”
The rest is a story that is still largely secret as the race, with its reduced communications, only allows the foam of confidences. There were ups and downs, especially when the wind died down for a time in January, or a few days before the finish in the Atlantic run-up. There was also this rescue in the Indian Ocean, when, third in the race, she was diverted to come to the aid of the Finn Tapio Lehtinen, whose boat had sunk in barely five minutes. Kirsten Neuschäfer had managed to recover it, for barely an hour before entrusting it to a cargo ship that was also confused.
The maneuver had earned the South African bonus hours. But this credit, she will not need to use it. Passed in the lead at Cape Horn, then followed in recent days by the Indian Abhilash Tomy, she made it a point of honor to charge towards the finish to triumph without discussion. “She’s amazing” recently commented Jean-Luc Van den Heede. We can not say it better.
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