Only 371 miles to Ellen’s finish line

by Kingfisher Challenges on 7 Feb 2005 On Day 71, there is less than 400 miles to go for B&Q skipper, Ellen MacArthur as she attempts to break the round the world speed record as she heads eastwards towards the Bay of Biscay, looking for potentially the one final wind shift that will see her home to the finish.

Her lead has been falling quickly from 2 days 6 hours yesterday morning, to 1 day 23 hours now, as her course takes her away from the direct route to the finish, combined with the fact that Francis Joyon, on his 90ft multihull IDEC, was super fast towards the finish. He clocked up average 400 mile days over the last four days direct to the finish.

For MacArthur, barring any major incidents or technical failure, her goal of setting a new solo non-stop round the world speed record looks to be within her grasp, with 371 miles left to go on the clock, which stops ticking at 0704GMT on Wednesday, 9th February. Latest estimated time of crossing the line is still looking possible for Monday.

Gale force conditions are slowly abating as B&Q, approximately 250 miles WNW of Cape Finisterre, pushes eastwards towards the Bay of Biscay - and hopefully more favourable south easterly winds.

Overnight, wind speeds were averaging 32, 34, 35 knots and gusting up in the high 40's, blasting MacArthur with a full Force 8 gale as she fully reefed her mainsail and switched to the storm jib.

‘Strongest breeze has been lower than I thought. A short period of gusts up to 40, but nothing that we couldn't have coped with using the staysail, so a bit annoying.

‘It will be another six hours before the wind starts dropping, so sensible thing is to stay like this until it gets light. My biomonitor tells me I've slept for 54 minutes, so that is good, I guess. Am just making my dinner now [0100!],’ Ellen told her shoreside crew.

One more final battering as a very tired multihull and an even more exhausted skipper ride out the storm, hoping they can hang together and not break anything that could wreak the record attempt in these final stages.

It is still blowing an average of 27 knots this morning, but the winds should decrease to 20-25 knot range today and 15-20 knots this evening.

The wind is expected to turn from the north more to the right, forcing a bad heading almost at right angles to the finish, but then going into the east and south-east during the night.

Commanders' Weather forecast the all important wind shift for about 0300GMT tomorrow near 45 degrees north and 7 30 degrees west. At the point, MacArthur should be able tack on to starboard, possibly for the last time, and head north again in a good 14-18 knot breeze to the finish line off Ushant.

Ships, exploding hard drives and Vendée Globe boats add more action to the unfolding drama over the last 12 hours for B & Q.

‘A few ships around, alarms going off all around me. I put the radar on and could see really clearly. On deck you can't look forward, the spray stings your eyes too much, although I did clean the windows the other day, and I can see more from inside than on deck to the water hurling over the deck,’ Ellen commented.

Shipping will become a more hazardous threat as Ellen gets into the Bay of Biscay and moves north in the busy shipping channels. B&Q is also just a handful of miles away from two of the Vendée Globe boats; TEMENOS (Dom Wavre, currently fourth) and VMI (Seb Josse, fifth).

These two skippers have been fighting it out neck and neck since Cape Horn, on their way to the finish in Les Sables.

Early this morning, one of the Sony VAIO laptops that power the critical information systems onboard B&Q - including routing and navigation software - suffered a meltdown.

The VAIO's have survived 70 days without a glitch, despite continual pounding onboard B&Q, but last night's storm was the last straw for one of the two hard disks.

At 0750 hours, Charles Darbyshire, Technology Manager, received a call to report the failure. Just seven minutes later, MacArthur had replaced the hard disk with a pre-start mirrored backup unit, re-configured the software, and was up and running again - preparation counts!

From Ellen this morning:

‘The breeze is oscillating the whole time - one minute its up at 35 knots, the next its decreasing to 16, then you get a gust of 31 then it drops down to 20 - it's really up and down.

‘So hard to keep the boat going - my boat speed at the moment is 12.7 knot average which is terrible. We had a few really big waves in the night - I was virtually thrown out of the bunk by one that broke right over the boat filled the cockpit - it was good I had the door shut.

‘The cuddy was full, everything was awash, all the ropes were swimming around in the cockpit - there must have been a ton of water in the cockpit, I was a bit worried about the structure.

'Had a guest of 35 knots 20 minutes ago, but average speed now is 23 knots, so it’s really hard to know what to do. If the breeze is averaging 30 knots, I put the third reef in and if its averaging 28-29 knots, I have two reefs in, but when you are getting gusts of 36 knots that is ****loads.

‘I'm on three and a staysail - I certainly wouldn't put the staysail up because its top is 24 knots. I spent a few hours in my bunk - it was hard, very rough and cold, but to be honest, it wasn't as cold as the night before. The night before I really suffered on the cold front.

’I really worked hard last night - I was saying it’s rough now, it’s now the time to be gaining, and I just thought 'keep it together and try and rest'. It’s hard to rest when the breeze is dying, so hard.’

KEY DATA 70TH DAY 0710 GMT:

Distance ahead: 828 miles

Time ahead: 1 day 23 hours [representing 65.28% of time remaining] calculated using the time it took for Joyon to get to the same Distance to Finish as Ellen's current position

OMEGA: Official timekeeper for Ellen MacArthur

Lat/Long: 45 23 N / 013 03 W (approx 250 miles WNW Cape Finisterre)

Average Boat speed: 11.98 knots (heading E by N)

True Wind speed: 27.3 knots (direction N)

Sea temperature: 12.7 degrees C

Distance sailed so far: 26,883 miles at an average speed of 16.0 knots

(data communicated by Thrane MiniC via BT Business Broadband)

Distance to finish: 371 miles

Earliest: Monday 1200-1800GMT

Average: Monday 1800GMT to Tuesday 0200 GMT

Latest: During Tuesday

Update based on data recorded 0710 GMT

Go to website for latest: http://www.teamellen.com

* The teamellen.com website has been rebuilt since the technical problems experienced two days ago. To make sure you have the latest version of the site, please ensure you have emptied your cache.