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Ellen: Record looks within grasp
Feb 7, 2005 04: 03 EST
Less than 400 miles to go for Ellen MacArthur 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.
Lead falling
Her lead has been falling quickly from 2 days, 6 hours Saturday morning to 1 day, 23 hours Sunday. 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, clocking up average 400 mile days over the last four days direct to the finish.
Clock stops ticking on Wednesday
But 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.
Exploding hard drives
Ships, exploding hard drives and Vendée Globe boats add more action to the unfolding drama over the last 12 hours: "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."
Pre-start mirrored backup unit
Early Sunday 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 Charles Darbyshire, Technology Manager, received a call to report the failure and 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!
Ellen is on a winter attempt on the world record held by Francis Joyon: Round the World, non stop, singlehanded, 72d, 22h, 54m, 22s. She crossed the start line off Ushant at 08:10:44 GMT Sunday, November 28, 2004. She will have to cross the finish line by 07:04:06 GMT on February 9, 2005.
Ellen MacArthur shot to fame when she became the fastest solo woman to sail round-the-world in 2001’s Vendee Globe. Now she has her sight set on breaking the world solo speed record over the next two years in a brand new £1.5million trimaran designed by Nigel Irens. Named Castorama B&Q, after its sponsors, the 75 ft long triple-hulled boat is built for speed, said to reach over 35 knots.
Ellen is eyeing several records including the 24-hour distance record as well as making it round-the-world fastest. Typically, trimarans are fast boats, but trickier to handle in high winds. After last year’s dismasting on her catamaran Kingfisher 2 in the Jules Verne Challenge and everything it took to come this far, Ellen is thrilled to be on the water again.
Image courtesy Ellen's website.
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| Fedor - less than a week to go! Jun 3, 2005 | | Saito San - closing in on home and record! Jun 2, 2005 | | Atlantic Four: And they are off! Jun 1, 2005 | | Ollie - is anybody out there? May 31, 2005 | | ExplorersWeb Week in Review May 30, 2005 | | And they are off! May 27, 2005 | | Ellen gives transatlantic record a second battle May 27, 2005 | | Vagabond update - Polar bears, 200 candles and ice melting in Inglefieldbukta May 26, 2005 | | ExWeb interview - Atlantic Four: "It was all about persuading our wives" May 25, 2005 | | Iridium: "Invalid battery - matches found, 0" May 24, 2005 |
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