Wiktionary
brace about
vb. (context nautical English) to brace the ship's yards on the opposite tack when go about
Usage examples of "brace about".
She, for one, would have no share in maintaining the pretence of which she had been a victim: the pretence that a man and a woman, forced into the narrowest of personal relations, must remain there till the end, though they may have outgrown the span of each other's natures as the mature tree outgrows the iron brace about the sapling.
There was a momentary glint of brightness, of a moist, penetratingly blue eye, straining to see, then the neck muscles relaxed and the head lay still, kept in place by the bands that formed a kind of brace about it.