UFO Info Week-End

It was the second time she had seen the notorious cape in less than nine

It was the second time she had seen the notorious cape in less than nine months and it marked the completion of a single-handed circumnavigation that began when she dropped off her three crew last spring – after sailing with them in her brand new Open 60 boat, Kingfisher, from its launch in Auckland across the Southern Ocean – and began the single-handed phase of her build-up for this race. As she arrived at Cape Horn last time, moved to tears by the experience, even she would never have dared to dream of what has happened since then.Which is that MacArthur made it safely to England, then within a month led a world-class Open 60 fleet into Newport, Rhode Island to win a major transatlantic race, and is now in second place and fending off all-comers in the biggest one of them all.MacArthur surprised even herself with her transatlantic win last June: she had arrived in England exhausted by her sail from New Zealand.Her critics then said that Kingfisher, designed as it was to be less radical and so more forgiving to a girl of 5ft 2in, was better suited to the upwind conditions of the transatlantic race than the round-the-world monster. “Wait until the Vendée,” they said.”Wait until the Vendée,” said all of the sailors she beat across the Atlantic, who were busy excusing themselves with the fact that their boats had been designed with the bigger picture in mind.And then, on 9 November the bigger picture started to unfold. The 25,000-mile Vendée Globe set sail from Les Sables d’Olonne in France and 23 of the world’s finest single-handed sailors left France bound for France – via Antarctica.From the beginning MacArthur was in the running at the head of the fleet, and just as she showed she had the physical stamina to keep driving Kingfisher at similar levels of efficiency to her rivals, so too she seemed able to make the tactical calls that kept her from spearing off on a limb and losing touch with the pacemakers.”Wait until the Southern Ocean,” the voices murmured.

And just as Kingfisher was deemed ideally suited for the transatlantic race, the voices were saying that while it was one thing to stay with the leaders on the Atlantic phases of the Vendée, the Southern Ocean would be another deal altogether. Even her campaign team feared this could be the moment when MacArthur’s strength, experience and guile would be examined and found wanting.But MacArthur entered the most feared waters on the planet fighting for fourth place, and then one of the pre-race favourites, Yves Parlier, lost his mast. She was up to third.As low pressure after low pressure rolled through and the boats all got the pasting they had been expecting, MacArthur rose to the challenge and did not just prevail, but remained competitive. It is now around three weeks since she found herself hanging from the second spreader of Kingfisher’s mast – some 60 feet above the deck – by just one arm as she wrestled in more than 40 knots of wind to lower her mainsail to the deck That was probably the nearest she has come to dying. That, or the encounter with an iceberg that passed just a few metres from her window at nearly 20 knots.But if such storiesare the headline-grabbers of a single-handed race around the world, it is the relentless cold, the relentless high winds and the plain relentlessness of the Southern Ocean that only the most determined characters are able to overcome.”The Southern Ocean is unique,” she said last week “It wants everything.

And when you have nothing left, it wants twice as much again. I will be happy to get back into the Atlantic Ocean.”And on Friday Ellen MacArthur got her wish as she completed her lap of the planet – a moment which must have finally swayed her doubters and impressed even herself. Before the start she conceded that “a top 10 result would be an achievement, a top five finish an exceptional result”. Right now the podium is not beyond her reach, although the dénouement of this race might be out of her hands.In the week before Cape Horn MacArthur overtook her friend and nearest rival Roland Jourdain, who admitted he had been suffering from mast problems that had forced him to sail with at least two reefs in his mainsail since the middle of December. Jourdain is due to anchor in the lee of Cape Horn in the next few days to try to fix the problem before hitting the lighter airs of the South and North Atlantics.But MacArthur has power problems of her own: both her Code 5 downwind sails, one of her two spinnakers and her gennaker are unusable, and so she is badly lacking horsepower when the wind is lighter. During the occasional lighter moments in the last week before she reached the Horn her rivals were rolling up to her, and if she can’t effect a repair, the likelihood is that several could sail past.But if anyone has the determination and the initiative to stick shredded sails back together and to hold on to the second place that has already elevated her beyond her own expectations, it is MacArthur.When she left the start line in November she was still the ingénue and novelty entrant. Whatever the result now, the person who returns will be an experienced and accomplished racing sailor with a track record that should be currency into any grand prix ocean racing team..