Yachting: MacArthur counts the miles to glory

The successful end of her precarious attempt to become the fastest solo sailor round the planet was a tantalising prospect for an exhausted Ellen MacArthur yesterday.

At 07.04am she had 96 hours to complete the final 670 miles to the finish off Ushant. She should not need all of them - but she was about to take another pasting from gale-force headwinds.

This pilgrimage has stretched body, mind and boat to their limits, and no wonder there is a continuing note of caution coming from Briton MacArthur and her team.
Just three days ago they saw a fellow soloist, Mike Golding, lose his keel a mere 52 miles from the end of the Vendee Globe round-the-world race, so MacArthur is all too aware of how much she relies on the kit she has under her feet, the 75-foot trimaran B&Q.

One small breakage could trigger a domino sequence to bring everything crashing down.

When she was second in the last Vendee, another woman, Catherine Chabaud, was dismasted approaching the Bay of Biscay, just 600 miles - as MacArthur was yesterday - from the finish.

But, catastrophe apart, MacArthur should be able to celebrate, at the latest on Wednesday, and assume the mantle of others like Sir Francis Chichester and Sir Robin Knox-Johnston.

Can "arise Dame Ellen" be far away? There is a vast difference, however, between what those two nautical knights achieved and what Ellen has done.

Knox-Johnston was entirely on his own for 313 days, no emails, no weather routing, no constant source of reassurance.

MacArthur had 72 days to face, every one of them with massive shore support. Hers was a custom-built assault on what had been a relatively soft target until Francis Joyon set off in an underfunded, heavy, old boat and lowered the record by 20 days last year.

When MacArthur shot to fame, coming second in the 2000-01 Vendee, the mantra in her camp was "single-handed, but never alone".

She did not endear herself to many by saying that on a scale of one to 10 what she has done now is "nine point something" whereas "I would stick the Vendee Globe on a five, max".

The satirical television programme Dead Ringers could have a field day with all the tears and drama that have accompanied this journey. But that would be not to know - and she can be difficult to know, despite the outer layer of unfettered emotion - the inner Ellen.

The man who came second in this year's Vendee, Jean le Cam, can be embarrassingly Latin in his emotions, in contrast to the ice-cold, self-focused winner, Vincent Riou.

MacArthur has both sides to her nature. She has sinews of steel and an "up and at it" determination never to be beaten.

But she has also been saying: "I am sitting here with tears in my eyes, not really knowing what to do with myself... I doubt I shall ever be able to express what this trip has put me through... I believe I am running so close to empty it is only the energy from others that is keeping me going... this trip has taken all I have, every last drop and ounce... There are no reserves, and I am pretty fragile right now."

In effect, she has never been alone. Her shore team deny that their communications bill will be enormous, but she has had two sets of weather routers guiding her every mile, she has on-tap medical advice and even sleep monitoring - sleep deprivation has been a major problem.

If MacArthur's exploits have overshadowed those of Golding - and the French media are furious that she should have timed her run, as they see it, to steel the thunder of their prestige event - they can never completely obscure either the other individual efforts that have been made or the foundations for the future of British long-distance solo sailing that have been laid in the two events.

Before he started and all the way through the Vendee race, Golding was saying that, at 44, he thought this was his last major crack at round-the- world solo sailing. But before he finished there were already murmurs within his camp about doing what used to be called Around Alone, renamed Five Oceans, which has stopovers.

He also conspicuously failed to rule out another Vendee when he finished late last week. And he is scheduled to do the Calais Round Britain Race in the summer, followed by the two-handed Transat Jacques Vabre from Le Havre to Brazil in November.

The question for MacArthur is whether to continue along the controllable path of record-hunting or return to the more exposed competitive race track.

- INDEPENDENT