Sailing: Repair job costs MacArthur time

Ellen MacArthur saw her advantage at the head of the Route du Rhum solo transatlantic race whittled away by her closest rival in the Monohull 60ft class, Mike Golding, after a broken sail forced her into emergency repairs on board Kingfisher.

Defying very choppy conditions, MacArthur spent almost two hours at the top of the 27-metre mast after the lashing on the gennaker halyard block broke. Due to the risky nature of the operation, she was forced to drop the spinnaker sail during the repairs.

"I'm safe, I'm back – I've done it," MacArthur recounted afterwards in an e-mail to shore. "What a mission, but got kite back up and racing again. Getting up the mast was not too bad although coming down was a nightmare – boat rolling around and nothing to hold on to. Honestly, I'm fine though – I just talked to myself the whole way up and back down."

The repairs enabled Golding, in Ecover, to close the gap to around two nautical miles, though the boats are on quite different courses, around 1,282 nautical miles from the finish in Guadeloupe.