The return leg of the Bermuda 1-2 Race sets sail from St George’s on Thursday with Cole Brauer looking to follow up her first-leg win.

Brauer won the first leg of the solo race, which started in Newport, on June 2, on board First Light with a corrected time of 92hr 24min, more than ten hours ahead of her nearest rivals.

Writing on her Facebook page, Brauer admitted that she was thrilled to have won.

“A couple days ago I crossed the finish line of the Bermuda 1-2, a solo race from Newport to St George’s, Bermuda,” she said.

“What an awesome trip it was and way too fast. First Light and I finished 78 nautical miles in front of the second-place boat.”

Brauer was also pleased that her weather preparation was on point and managed to help save valuable time.

“You must go to @sea_tactics for the weather prep,” she said.

“It seemed to have really paid off. Chelsea and I discussed beforehand what our plan was and, while the weather was changing rapidly, it seemed almost a gamble.

However, the Euro model had been quite reliable over the last four weeks so we decided that this model, the most risky one, would be our main focus.

“It took me pretty far west and stayed west, adding a total of 90 extra miles to the trip. I spent the majority of the race downloading weather, looking outside at the clouds and watching my angles on the instruments.

“I realised quickly that the Euro model was matching up with my observations almost exactly, so I took the gamble, ran hard west, and it paid off. It was scary continuing to gybe my way back into the front since I would wake up to flogging sails as First Light would run right out of the front and I would gybe her back into the 30 knots of breeze, pushing myself even farther west.”

Brauer was sure that she was falling off the pace and made some desperate moves to stay in the race.

“By the third day I was convinced I had lost the race,” she said.

“But I kept pushing. I downloaded more weather showing a dead zone just to the east of where I was headed and I made more moves to skirt it to the west, eventually ending up pointing west of Bermuda.

“However, as I got closer I was gradually lifted and found myself pulled right into St George’s without having to do a sail change, which after the 100 or so sail changes I had done over the three days, four hours and 55 minutes, I felt I had earned my stripes enough to be given a little break for the finish.

“I crossed the line to realise that I had won line honours, which was really all I wanted.

“I just want to thank to the race committee and my wonderful escort boat, my awesome shore crew who are either on their way here, here already, or on standby.

“This really has been a dream.”