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The Tight Squeeze Issue

The Woman Determined to Be the First Trans Person to Sail the World Alone

"When things get violent, and the boats get thrown around, and you're tossed around like a cork in a bottle—you find out who you are."

A version of this story appears in the March issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

Men and women have lost their lives on senseless quests into the unknown—frozen to death on the steps of Mount Everest, or drowned by a storm in the ancient Indian Ocean. Yet modern man is pathetically moored to expectations in our daily lives, to family, to company, to country. Sometimes these conventions defy our true nature, becoming intolerable.

This fall, under the moniker God's Wind 2017, Sabreena Lachlainn will set out in a 34-foot sailboat, to be carried around the world entirely alone, without stopping. Her interest in sailing began when she was a child, and has lasted throughout her life, but for many years she felt held back by her circumstances, uncertain if she has what it takes to sail. "Through the years I was just telling myself, that's not true; you're the only one stopping you from doing this," Lachlainn said.

The feat will take about seven months and, if she succeeds, Lachlainn will become to first transgender woman to accomplish it. Less than 100 people, she told me, have ever done it; meanwhile, she said, more than 500 have entered outer space. "I'm somebody who has hopes, who has dreams," Lachlainn said. She believes the journey will prove both to herself and the world that it is possible to achieve such dreams, even when people believe that who you are is itself a limitation.

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