Hello, Sailor

Kirsten Neuschäfer recently became the first South African sailor - and the first woman - to win the Golden Globe Race, spending 235 days at sea, solo. In an exclusive interview, we got to peek inside the mind of this extraordinary adventurer

- ROBYN MACLARTY

Calling 40-year-old Kirsten Neuschäfer fearless is like calling the sea wet. It’s not a state she has achieved simply by overcoming every obstacle; it’s part of her DNA.

At the age of 22, much to her mother’s horror, Kirsten set off to achieve her dream of cycling through Africa from Germany to Cape Agulhas – and she did it: 15000km over the course of a year. The experience, hard as it was, cemented what she already knew: she wanted a life of adventure. She signed up for a basic sailing course, then started crewing for anyone who would have her, ‘just to clock up miles so that I could get to the next level’. After a stint teaching at a sailing school in East London, she progressed to sailboat deliveries, first coastal, then offshore.

It was a delivery from Portugal to South Africa – a two-month solo trip – with only a wind-vane as self-steering on an old 32-foot ferro-cement sloop that whetted her appetite for long-distance solo sailing. And when she heard about the Golden Globe Race (GGR) in 2018 – a solo around-the-world ‘retro’ sailing race – Kirsten couldn’t resist.

She spent a year in the Prince Edward Islands (PEI) refitting her boat, Minnehaha. (It is now even the subject of a song by a PEI singersongwriter: Lennie Gallant wrote about Kirsten and her GGR journey in the song ‘On the Minnehaha’.)

She shares with us the highs, lows and remarkable experiences that will stay with her for a lifetime.