Erica Lush is forging ahead in the world of competitive sailing

The local sailor will compete in France’s La Solitaire du Figaro — one of the toughest training platforms for offshore racing — which begins Sept. 7, 2025

Photos by Cate Brown

As Narragansett Bay swells with boats and sailors this summer, one local woman will be preparing to undertake one of the sport’s most challenging single-handed races: La Solitaire du Figaro, which departs from and finishes in France, with routes to Ireland and Spain. For Erica Lush, the voyage is the next in a series of maritime adventures that began when she was a child, cruising with her family aboard their sailboat from Conanicut Island to Martha’s Vineyard, where they would drop anchor and raft up with a few other boats and families.

“That was definitely the beginning of everything,” says Lush.

At 32, she’s logged more than 75,000 nautical miles — the equivalent of more than two laps around the planet. La Solitaire will be her first solo or single handed race. It’s a challenge she’s been preparing for since January although, in some ways, her training started years ago.

Saltwater is in her blood: Lush’s father competed in solo ocean races in the 1970s and ’80s, and she took sailing lessons at the Conanicut Yacht Club as a youth.

Lush attended North Kingstown High School, where she was a member of the sailing team, an experience defined by great leadership (to this day, several peers from her high school team are in the professional sailing space). She then sailed with the women’s team at Boston University, where she was pushed to further develop her skills.

She earned a U.S. Coast Guard captain’s license and spent summers working onboard 12-metre yachts in Newport Harbor at a time when there were few female captains. Some of her male counterparts spotted her ponytail and immediately took her less seriously, Lush recalls.

“It’s amazing that now there are so many female captains in the bay,” she says.

Looking back, she says her experience working with the limited number of women on the waterfront influenced her decision “to really double down and stick with [sailing].”

La Solitaire is an 1,850-mile offshore solo sailing race. On the first leg, which begins Sept. 7, 2025, contenders set sail from Rouen, France, head toward Fastnet in Ireland, and finish in Baie de Morlaix, France. From there, the fleet races to Vigo, Spain, and the third and final leg departs Vigo and concludes in Saint-Vaast-La-Hougue, France.

Each leg is roughly 600 nautical miles with a 3-5 day expected completion; between each leg, sailors have a few days off, and each port has an active race village. The second and third legs pass through the Bay of Biscay, a part of the Atlantic known for some of the strongest currents in the world and an area where the route hugs a particularly rocky shoreline. There is one main start — from Rouen — and about two dozen boats are expected to compete this year.

Lush is taking on the Solitaire aboard a Figaro BENETEAU 3 named Hope, a nod to her home state of Rhode Island’s motto and the progress in American sailing she aspires to lead.

La Solitaire, established in 1991, is known as one of the toughest training platforms for offshore racing, and as such is often a training ground for sailors who seek to compete in the Vendée Globe or other round-the-world challenges like The Ocean Race.

It’s no coincidence La Solitaire’s motto is “Ici naissent les légendes” or “Here legends are born.”

Lush traveled to France six months ago and successfully completed required trial races during her training. Her biggest concern was sleep: How long could she go without it? What was her limit?

In the first qualifier, the Solo Guy Cotten Regatta held in March, she was already running low on sleep when, finish line nearly in sight, the wind switched. It took great effort to complete the race, she says, and the first time she “experienced my limit of sleep.”

The second qualifier, Solo Maître CoQ, was held in Les Sables d’Olonne in May. “I felt much more confident about how I was going to manage myself,” she says.

Lush put her training to the test in late spring when, alone and with little opportunity to sleep, she delivered a sailboat from Maine to Newport.

“I wasn’t even fazed,” she says of the 35-hour trip. “I can already feel the confidence difference from having done this experience.”

A week later, she set out to compete in the Bermuda 1-2, where a single sailor races 635 miles from Newport to Bermuda, then is joined there by a crew member for the return race. Each one way trip is about the same nautical distance as a leg of La Solitaire. She will return to France in August to ready for the race, which sets off in September.

“[The goal] is to get to the start line in the best condition possible,” says Lush.

In 2021 and 2024, Lush represented the U.S. at the offshore Double-Handed World Championships (offshore is a general term for when a vessel is at sea for at least one night and loses sight of land). She also joined the second and third legs of the 2023 Ocean Globe Race aboard Maiden, when it was sailed by an all-female international crew.

A major factor of her forging ahead in the professional sailing world is to make way for more women, she says, especially in the U.S., where it can be hard to break into the sport.

“On the one hand, I’m adding to the visibility of women in sailing,” says Lush, “and on the other hand, I’m building in opportunities.”

Aurora “Rory” Meunier Mott, a Westerly resident and member of the University of Rhode Island sailing team, is among the next generation of women Lush believes is making waves in sailing. The 2024 graduate of The Prout School flew to France in the spring to assist Lush in her training and qualifying races.

“It’s so cool that [this is] on her radar,” says Lush, who also is a beneficiary of women in professional sailing paying it forward: the sails on her boat for La Solitaire once belonged to Francesca Clapcich, who sailed with 11th Hour Racing in the last Ocean Race. She is currently preparing for the 2028 Vendée Globe, a non-stop, round-the-world race that starts and ends in France.

“This completely changed the game for me, thanks to her,” Lush says of receiving Clapcich’s sails, which she’d otherwise have had to purchase. “Sailing as a sport has so much potential to empower and inspire. The encouragement to continue … is so important.”

Her long-term goal is to compete in Vendée Globe, which, for her, would mean the 2032 event. Acknowledging that is “quite a ways out,” Lush says it’s not outside the realm of possibility. Especially not with one or two La Solitaire experiences on her resume.

Last year, 25 percent of the sailors competing in La Solitaire were women (sans any sort of participation quota).

As Lush sees it, solo sailing is an equal opportunity sport at its core.

“It’s the definition of equitable,” she says, noting that winning or losing comes down to the individual sailor’s skills and instincts. La Solitaire is a one-design competition, meaning the racing boats are all the same. In this case it’s the Figaro 3, which is built specifically for La Solitaire.

The real barrier in professional sailing, Lush says, is sponsorship; obtaining the millions of dollars necessary to cover the costs of a competitive racing campaign. Such sponsorships are more common in Europe than in the U.S., she says.

“In my mind, sponsorship actually makes the sport more accessible,” she says, explaining that it expands opportunities beyond private funding and eliminates the limitations of not having access to such
funding.

She’s had to school herself in securing sponsorships, along with marketing techniques and social media strategies. So far, Lush has secured funds via crowdsourcing and individual donations. She also received support from the Performance Sailing Fund at the New York Yacht Club where, it’s worth noting, Commodore Clare Harrington is another woman creating new representation within local sailing culture.

“No matter what the dollar size is, I’m blown away by the support,” Lush says

There’s no question that Lush has come a long way from the “sail camping” of her youth but retains the same sense of adventure that compels her forward, even if blissful nights off the coast of Vineyard Haven have been swapped for sleepless nights off the coast of France.

To be sure, the stakes are higher and the impacts greater, but the ultimate objective remains the same: to forge ahead.

To keep up with Erica on her sailing journey, follow her on Instagram at @lushsailing