The wild world of long-distance solo yacht racing was launched by a select crew of relative madmen, guys like Robin Knox-Johnston and Eric Tabarly. But the sport has evolved in many ways over the years, and a long list of courageous women has since leveled the playing field, giving the he-men all they can handle. As a sailing journalist, I had the pleasure of covering some of the early pioneers, including Isabelle Autissier and Ellen MacArthur. Still, at the time, theirs was a lonely pursuit in more ways than one.
Today, what’s more uncommon is a marathon oceanic event without a strong female presence. For instance, in each of the past two round-the-world Vendée Globe races, there have been a half-dozen women entrants. Most were French, but a gutsy American, Cole Brauer, has joined the ranks of elite offshore sailors. In last year’s Global Solo Challenge, she finished second overall and became the first American woman to successfully race alone around the world. The accomplishment earned her a prestigious honor: the 2024 Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year.
But for every Cole Brauer, there’s an ambitious, hungry newcomer setting her own course across the watery world. Someone like dauntless Ambre Hasson, whose singular story is the very definition of perseverance.
Born in Paris and raised in Virginia, Hasson, now 31, was seemingly on the fast track toward conventional success. After graduating from the University of Virginia with a degree in economics, she landed a tech job in Manhattan, with a particular goal. “I wanted to make money,” she told me, “as much as I could.”
Then came the pandemic, and a dreadful sense of walls closing in. She bailed out for Florida and, on a total whim, decided she needed a sailboat. Not knowing how to sail was an obstacle, but she landed a volunteer job at a sailing school in exchange for lessons, found a Bristol 29 to live aboard, and started doing some local racing, which eventually took her offshore. It all clicked.
“What drew me to sailing was the freedom and the connection to nature,” she said. “When I discovered offshore racing, it added in the competition and intensity and strategy. The concept of finding your limit—there’s nothing else really like it. It’s an art and a science. It’s very intuitive, but also very precise.”
The Vendée is the holy grail of solo racing, but Hasson understood it was a bridge too far for a rookie. Instead, she set her sights on the 2003 Mini Transat, a biennial 4,000-nautical-mile event from France to the Caribbean contested aboard twitchy, souped-up 21-foot rockets called Classe Minis. She moved back to France—the sport’s epicenter—where she found a welcoming community, scraped up enough cash to find a used boat, and threw herself into training. It was all going according to plan right up to the completion of her challenging 1,000-mile qualifying sail, when she lost control of the boat in a narrow channel.
“I could feel the boat hitting the bottom, and then the keel came right through it,” she said. “I felt powerless.” With that, she slipped over the side and scrambled ashore.
For many—or perhaps most—of us, that would’ve concluded the story. Period. But not Hasson. “The one thing I knew for sure was that I needed to keep sailing,” she said. “That much was clear. How I would do it was not.”
She has since regrouped, found a new more-competitive boat, assembled a small support team, and launched a website (ambresails.com) to procure funds to pay for it all. The next Mini Transat race sets forth this September, and Hasson has every intention to be on the starting line.
Still, I had a question for her: “After losing your boat the first time, did you ever ask yourself, What the hell am I doing?”
“I guess that would’ve been the normal reaction,” she said. “But I didn’t want the whole journey to end this way. So I looked at it as an opportunity to learn. I identified some things that I could’ve done differently, that I could do better the next time around. I want a different finish to the story. It has to end on a good note, right?”
Herb McCormick is a CW editor-at-large.
