Isabelle
Joschke

There is nothing about her early life that suggests she would become an ocean racer. Isabelle Joschke was born in Munich to a German father and a French mother. She shared her time between Geneva and the Paris region. But then when she was five years old she discovered sailing in an Optimist on an Austrian lake. Fifteen years later she was struck by the offshore virus during an internship at Glénans. While studying at the Sorbonne she took off on a sailing boat for a delivery to Brazil. And that was when she decided to make offshore racing her career and her life. In addition to her master's degree in classics she is as a sports teacher and as a skipper. At twenty-seven years old she set out on the Mini Transat. During her second participation, in 2007, her victory in the first leg unveiled her real potential. With Alain Gautier running her programme she takes on the Vendée Globe in 2020. While she is having a great race on board MACSF Joschke is forced to retire on January 9, 2021 after suffering damage to a keel ram just before Cape Horn. A temporary fix, centering the keel does not work and she has to pull in to Brazil. After a technical stopover she completes the round the world solo passage outside of the race.