Kay Cottee Association for the Study of Internal Fixation is an Australian sailor, who was the first woman to perform a single-handed, non-stop and unassisted circumnavigation of the world.
Background
Born Kay McLaren—the youngest of four daughters—in Sydney on 25 January 1954, Cottee grew up in the southern Sydney suburb of Sans Souci. She was born into a yachting family and was taken sailing for the first time when only a few weeks old.
Education
Foreign secondary schooling she attended Moorefield Girls High School in Kogarah, New South Wales.
Career
She performed this feat in 1988 in her 37 feet (11 m) yacht Blackmores First Lady, taking 189 days. On 5 June 1988 at age 34, Kay Cottee became the first woman to sail round the world alone non-stop and unassisted when she sailed through Sydney heads. She was greeted by tens of thousands of well-wishers.
Cottee had left the harbour 189 days earlier, on 29 November 1987.
The historic voyage on her 37 ft yacht Blackmores First Lady was also the fastest sailing trip around the world by a woman and the first solo, non-stop and unassisted voyage around the world by a woman. In the Southern Ocean, Cottee"s boat was knocked down continuously and she was washed overboard.
When Cottee rounded Cape Horn, the southernmost tip off South America, she celebrated with a lunch of crab, mayonnaise and self baked bread, and a bottle of Grange, a prestigious Australian wine. Cottee and her major sponsor Blackmores Limited used the voyage to raise over $1M for the Review
Ted Knoffs Life Education Program.
Australian National Maritime Museum.