Sailing: Elements push Ellen to the limit

Great Britons of sailing

Nerves jangling nearly every hour, body pushed to the limit, and with the constant possibility of a major accident, Ellen MacArthur is on the last 1,500-mile push to the major turning point on Wednesday of her bid to set a new record for sailing solo round the world. She heads for Cape Horn four days and 19 hours ahead of the record schedule.

Mike Golding, already round the bottom of South America, now has a different set of problems as he tries to become the first non-Frenchman to win the Vendée Globe, that most punishing of single-handed round-the-world races. By yesterday he had cut Jean le Cam's lead to 29 miles, with Vincent Riou 23 miles off his bow in second.

By the end of this month, two remarkable Britons could have conquered a world previously dominated by their Gallic rivals. Doing the double is a mouthwatering prospect, but their objectives are vitally different.

MacArthur's enemy is the clock, and the target of 72 days, 22 hours and 54 minutes, set by the Frenchman Francis Joyon a year ago. Although Golding, too, is on a record-breaking timetable - he thinks the winner could be in before the end of this month - what matters most for him is crossing the finish first. That cannot come soon enough as, calamity of calamities, he has run out of cigarettes, having taken thousands with him.

MacArthur has poured her heart out to thousands of supporters logging on to her website every day. She has been more than ready to share her experiences with an audience enjoying it from the safety and comfort of their homes. After 41 days of riding the bucking bronco which is her 75-foot trimaran, B & Q, the diminutive 28-year-old from Whatstandwell, Derbyshire, has at times sounded as though she would give anything for a helicopter to whisk her away from a nightmare which has dredged every physical and mental resource she possesses.

When she says she is on the edge of control, that is exactly how it is. The Nigel Irens-designed trimaran is blisteringly fast. It takes only a small amount of sail to provide enough energy to set it charging off. In the middle of the night, careering down waves, sometimes knowing that ice could be lurking unseen off the bow, is like speeding down a narrow, twisty lane with no headlights, no brakes and plenty of bumps in the road. Manageable for a while, very wearing for an extended period, nerve-shattering for days on end. The possibility of death is never very far away.

So MacArthur lets off steam with a heart-on-sleeve description of exactly how she is feeling. It is the human side of her, for all to see. But there is a steely resolve to MacArthur which sets her apart.

Golding, at 44, faces a career-defining final three weeks. So often he has been denied when close to glory, hitting obstacle after obstacle, including the northern tip of New Zealand when leading the Around Alone Race. In the last Vendée, as MacArthur was catapulted to glory when coming second four years ago, he was dismasted within eight hours of the start but pulled himself up by his bootstraps and started, with a new mast, eight days late, finishing seventh.

He achieved podium places in two Jacques Vabre two-handed races, from Le Havre to Colombia and Brazil, but his latest yacht, designed by Merfyn Owen, was carefully put together and gave him victory in the single-handed Transat race from Plymouth to Boston last year.

It was the boost he needed, and meticulous preparation made him a pre-start favourite for the Vendée. A win in Les Sables d'Olonne will only confirm what he has shown in this race already, that he can live with the best in the long-distance single-handed racing game.

Talking at dawn yesterday from 750 miles south-east of Montevideo, Golding said he was still recovering from the pasting he took on the last few days to Cape Horn, but he felt it was possible that both he and Riou would pass Le Cam in the next 36 hours. "After all, I've got to take the lead sooner or later if I'm going to win," he said.

Before they can celebrate, though, both he and Mac-Arthur have to finish, prefer-ably not on the same day so that each can enjoy individual glory. With just under 6,000 miles for Golding and under 9,000 for MacArthur still to cover, anything can go wrong. Both are at the mercy of the weather. Golding has to pray that Lady Luck will not point her finger at one of his rivals, leaving him frustrated as a better breeze helps either of them to sail away.

MacArthur, too, has only paid her entry fee by holding everything together to take the yacht round the Horn. So far, her US-based weather-routing advice has contributed to spec- tacular progress. No weather adviser can create wind, though; if she is becalmed, the number of asterisks, instead of words, which will appear in the transcripts of her daily conversations from the boat will rival anything Jerry Springer: The Opera can produce.