STR IFE ON THE OCEAN WAV E Ellen MacArthur is exhausted. She has

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Feb 6, 2005 | by Jenifer Johnson

"IT'S funny, yesterday the finish seemed quite close, now it feels a very long way away . . . it's going to be tough, it's so cold that I had stomach ache, headache, starting coughing . . . it saps everything you've got, you can't recover. Really weird. We are in bands of cumulus, little black things, with big gusts . . . wind has gone from 15 to 28 knots and back to 19 knots . . . right now 31 knots again! These are the conditions to break the boat, probably more than any time in whole voyage."

Ellen MacArthur is suffering. Her body has been sapped by fatigue, her brain by lack of sleep. The 28-year-old sailor is currently in the last nail-biting stages of a race against the clock - to be the fastest person to sail around the world single-handed in a multihulled vessel. Yesterday's weblog from the tiny cabin of B&Q, her pounds-1.5 million trimaran, shows that MacArthur is in the last stages of the ultimate test of physical and mental endurance.

Her competition is invisible on the horizon, but on her website, and on charts at her Isle of Wight headquarters in Cowes she is racing against a thin red line, which indicates her progress against that of Frenchman Francis Joyon, who last year made the voyage in 72 days, 22 hours, 54 minutes and 22 seconds.

The 27,000-mile journey starts and ends at Ushant, off the coast of France, a circumnavigation of the globe, crossing the most treacherous stretches of ocean at the tail end of the hurricane season. Joyon (who has wished MacArthur all the best) slashed the previous record by 20 days, and experts said at the time that he could lose the record within 10 years. MacArthur is determined to prove them right. Last night, with just over 460 miles to the finish line, and a final gale-filled storm to get through, she was still two days and two hours ahead of the record pace.

"It is nail-biting to say the least, " says her business partner Mark Turner. "This race has been harder than Ellen expected, than I expected, than anyone could have predicted.

She is in the last deep furrow of fatigue, her body is knackered and worn out. It sounds entirely overdramatic but I can't overstate how tired she is. She's truly exhausted. As are the team here in Cowes."

Turner is pretty tired himself. When I ask how old he is he stutters: "38 . . . no, sorry, 37.

I'm so exhausted I can't remember."

The onshore team are clearly frustrated at watching the clock tick away so close to the finish line. "In a normal race you don't relax, but if you are pitted against 20 other guys out there, you will all suffer the same weather together - you can see that no-one is getting ahead of you.

"But Ellen is sailing against a ticking clock.

The pressure and mental strains on her are tremendous. If she doesn't beat the record she will be gutted, terribly disapointed . . . but it won't stop her."

MacArthur is an incredibly high achiever in her sport. She grew up in rural Derbyshire, and at four discovered her love of sailing after a family outing to the seaside. By the age of 11 she had scrimped together enough Christmas, birthday and dinner money to buy her own boat. Her father - a craft-anddesign teacher - helped her refit her second boat at 15.

At 18, she sailed single-handedly around Britain, and was named young sailor of the year, but had to work hard in order to save enough for a transatlantic trip. For 18 months she lived in a Portakabin eating beans on toast, trying to save enough money with Turner to compete in a transatlantic race. She wrote to 2500 potential sponsors - only two replied.

But MacArthur was determined to perform at the highest level. She decamped to France, finished 17th in her first transatlantic race, gaining the attention of the French public, and in 1998 was gifted a pounds-2m fortune from Kingfisher. She entered the resulting Kingfisher Open 60 yacht in the Vendee Globe in 2000, the toughest sailing race in the world, and finished second. Legend has it that her preparations included practising stitches on a pig skin in case she accidentally bit her tongue off, as had happened to a friend when he was struck by a boom. She received 52,000 e-mails during the journey, including many tales of individuals inspired by her to perform their own personal feats. Ellenmania was born.

In the past five years she has been awarded an MBE, written an autobiography, founded a company - Offshore Challenge - with Turner, built a house on Skye to share with her graphic designer boyfriend - and become the most famous sailor of her generation.

Her sporting success includes winning the Route du Rhum race in record time and being the fastest female to sail around the world, but there are also high-profile failures:

the mast of Kingfisher 2, a giant catamaran, snapped during an attempt on the Round The World record in 2003.

The current attempt on Joyon's record has therefore taken on a new significance for Team Ellen. Turner says: "Ellen has a deep love of being at sea, and she is a very competitive person. Put that together and that's why we are able to do this."