Wednesday, February 09, 2005
SAILING
After 71 Days Alone at Sea, It's Time for Some Company
By CHRISTOPHER CLAREY
What Ellen MacArthur was craving after 71 days 14 hours 18 minutes 33 seconds of stressed-out solitude at sea was eye contact.
She received plenty of it yesterday as she returned to dry land in the English port of Falmouth after setting her sport's latest speed record and further burnishing her status as a national icon in Britain.
Solo sailing is nowhere near as solitary as it used to be. There are Web cams and Internet links; satellite telephone conversations with friends, family, benefactors; and, most important for MacArthur's race against the clock, meteorologists.
But as connected as MacArthur was as she skimmed over the oceans at a record pace in her 75-foot trimaran, it was all virtual companionship. To enjoy the true company of her fellow man and woman, she had to wait until she crossed the finish line late Monday night off the French coast of Brittany.
To grasp the true force of her latest exploit, MacArthur had to wait 14 more hours until she hopped up on a stage at the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth, with thousands of spectators in the mood to give her plenty of positive feedback.
Standing in front of the crowd with a microphone in her hand and tears starting to creep down her apple cheeks, the 5-foot-3 MacArthur looked even more vulnerable than usual, but the luminous red numbers on the digital clock behind her on stage were a testimony to her resiliency and energy.
"I had a clock not dissimilar to this one on board, and for 71 days 14 hours 18 minutes 33 seconds, I watched it tick away," MacArthur said. "To see that clock there with the seconds not moving is absolutely, completely unbelievable. I'm so relieved, above all."
Only two people have completed a single-handed circumnavigation of the planet in a multihull, which is a much more volatile, easy-to-capsize craft than the monohulls that MacArthur and others have used in the Vendée Globe round-the-world race.
The first to go around alone in a multihull was the Frenchman Francis Joyon, who took 72 days 22 hours 54 minutes 22 seconds last year. That record looked out of reach. Only a decade ago, Bruno Peyron needed 79 days to get around the world with a full crew in his supersized catamaran.
Though the 28-year-old MacArthur figured it might require two or more attempts to surpass Joyon, she rounded Cape Horn with a five-day lead on Joyon's pace, then proceeded to lose much of that lead on the final leg home when the weather turned against her.
In the end, her edge on Joyon was slightly more than 32 hours, but she had a bigger edge in resources. Her celebrity - acquired through her second-place finish in the 2000 Vendée Globe race and her victory in the 2002 Route du Rhum - has allowed her the luxury of big budgets.
She has a sizeable team behind her, led by Mark Turner, the former sailor who has shaped MacArthur's career and finances.
Joyon handled his own weather work. MacArthur used an American company. Her new trimaran, designed by Nigel Irons, was built with her strengths and weaknesses in mind, while Joyon's multihull, originally built in the 1980's, had to be refitted and refurbished for his barer-bones effort.
MacArthur's voyage covered 27,353 miles, and she averaged 15.9 knots an hour and about four hours of sleep a night, nearly all of it coming in the form of naps of 20 to 30 minutes.
"There's no doubt this trip has been harder than anything I've taken on before," she said. "There were more pleasures to be found in the Vendée. This was exceptionally difficult, and it pushed me exceptionally hard, but there are always moments when the boat is sailing fantastic, and some days when the boat was just awesome and everything seemed right. And you get this huge buzz. You're averaging 20 knots in the middle of nowhere on a boat who has your life in its hands."
The daughter of school teachers, MacArthur was raised in landlocked Derbyshire, England, and saved most of her meal money from school for eight years to buy her first boat. Becoming fluent in French, she is that rare public figure who can speak to sensibilities on each side of the channel as well as to sponsors on each side. But the British, with their grand maritime tradition, were in no mood to share Tuesday.
She was soon joined on stage in Falmouth by Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, another British icon who returned to this same port when he became the first person to sail around the world on his own without stopping in 1968 and 1969.
"A year ago, a very tough, determined Frenchman put the single-handed record out of sight, and we all thought it would be there for 10 years, but today, this little slip of a thing has come charging back," Knox-Johnston told the crowd, before shifting his gaze back to MacArthur.
"You've managed to put us back on the sailing map," he said, "and I think we're all terribly grateful."
Copyright 2005
