Sailing: Richards prepares for journey into unknown

Only woman, only Briton and youngest contestant in 28,000-mile Around Alone race relishes ultimate solo test

Imagine being alone on a boat, so far out to sea that you have not seen land, let alone another craft, for weeks. It's night-time and cold, you're exhausted from a chronic lack of sleep and the towering dark swells are rolling ominously closer. You're on deck, trying to make a repair. Then you hear a snap.

When Emma Richards, one of British sailing's brightest natural talents, talks about moments of fear, you imagine such a scenario. "It's like looking over the cliff edge," she says. "You get a twinge in your heart, on your skin. Maybe you're on the bow and autopilot takes a wave in a funny way. It tries to correct itself and the boat twitches and you think you're losing your balance."

More daunting misfortune can occur, as it did to Richards in 1999 when the forestay, crucial in holding up the mast, broke away. "The only thing holding up the mast was the sail and the ropes. The only way to repair it was get the life jacket on and do it. At the time there was a two-minute pause just thinking: 'I've got to go up there.' Every time you go up the mast you think it could be dodgy."

It was not on that occasion and the 27-year-old hopes that no other such moments unfold between this Thursday and next April, during which time she hopes to become only the second British woman, after Ellen MacArthur in the Vendée Globe last year, to sail singled-handed around the world.

Richards' circumnavigation will come in the 28,800-mile Around Alone marathon, an event in which she will compete as the only woman, the only Briton and the youngest contestant. The French yachtswoman Isabelle Autissier is the only woman to have previously started the race, which started life in 1982 as the BOC Challenge.

The raison d'être of world sport's longest race has always been to test the best in the business in the most arduous conditions, from the prologue – which runs from Rhode Island to New York in three days' time before next Sunday's start – to the five legs that take in Torbay, Cape Town, Tauranga in New Zealand and Salvador in Brazil before the last 4,000 miles back to America. The mandatory stop-overs only serve to see the boats pushed harder than they would be in a non-stop event where major damage means the end of participation.

Richards, based in Hampshire but hailing from the sailing-mad town of Helensburgh on Scotland's west coast, will take part in the Open 60 Class on the monohull, Pindar, named after the Yorkshire company that sponsors her. The boat was formerly sailed under the name Gartmore by Josh Hall, a veteran of three BOC Challenges and the 2001-02 Vendée Globe who has been hired to head Richards' shore crew.

Before crossing the Atlantic to complete her Around Alone qualifier, Richards had previously only sailed Pindar for "a quick trip to Cherbourg to pick up some batons and for five days of corporate sailing, three hours each day. And that was it."

She says that her 28-day run to America, which ended on 1 September, proved "invaluable", not least in dispelling her unease at sailing alone for such a period. Her previous longest spell solo at sea had been 18 days.

"Before I set off that was my biggest worry, the amount of time on my own. On the way over I went two weeks without seeing anything, not even a container ship. The first land was Bermuda and that was after three weeks at sea.

"Now, in my head, the race itself is not around the world as such but five stages. And because I've done those 28 days on my own, I know I did it without going loopy.

"After the start, you will see other traffic, container ships most days at regular rate, but there will probably be only a couple of occasions when you might see the other competitors on the horizon. But there will be a daily chat session via radio for those who want to get involved and more often if there's anything to get excited about."

For a sailor who has previously not shown a particular fondness for lengthy trips on her own, Richards' reason for entering the Around Alone is simple. "It's the next step in my career," she says.

That career first steered into international waters in 1998, when, as a 23-year-old, she was selected as the youngest member of Tracey Edwards' crew on the Royal Sun Alliance in the Jules Verne Trophy. Richards, whose two brothers, Andy and Dave, and sister, Philippa, are all sailors, then became a skipper in 1999.

She has since won her class in three prestigious races, including the Transat Jacques Vabres from France to Colombia in 1999 and the Round Britain and Ireland Race in 2000, both alongside Miranda Merron. Richards also joined the all-female crew of Amer Sports Too crew for the fourth leg of the Volvo Ocean Race from New Zealand to Brazil earlier this year.

The myriad attractions of the sea she likens to changing landscapes. "You get very contrasting seascapes just as you do going from Hampshire to Scotland," she says. "Calm weather, bad weather, varying skies and light, big waves. I enjoy every part of it. When it's calm you do repairs and when it's big seas it's the best sailing in the world."

The prospect of bad weather does not worry her. "I quite enjoy it, to be honest. Using that bad weather to get where you want to go. If you can keep going when the skies are opening all over you, perfect."

The day-to-day routine is equally cheerily embraced. "It's so small you can't swing a cat," Richards says of the cabin where she will try to snatch up to four hours of sleep a day in naps of 20 to 30 minutes. The rest of the time will easily be filled by navigating, repairs, checking for weather information, radioing the race committee daily, talking to fellow competitors, e-mailing her team and making sure that her batteries never drop below two volts of charge. And that's on a calm day.

If there were a crisis, says Richards, the chances are she would have no time to fret about it. "Most fear is retrospective," she says. "You don't get fear from regular sailing. As soon as something breaks you have to deal with it. If you don't, immediately, it can get a lot worse. It's only afterwards you might think 'That was close' but at the time you get on with it."

In any case, she adds, there are so many emergency procedures and equipment in place, from radio to satellite trackers, from beacon systems with boggling acronyms to "back-ups for back-ups" that there are almost always ways to get help.

"As long as you're conscious to use them," she adds, deadpan. "I'm not one of those people who just like to sit around and reflect on life. I just want to get on and race."