She survived the worst storm of her voyage, and now she’s gliding home at 13 knot-plus, with just 142 miles to go. Unless her mast falls down, she should be across the finish later this evening, and looks set to break Joyon’s solo, non-stop record by just over a day. Pretty incredible, in light of the fact that most pundits thought Joyon’s record would be around for about a decade. But it wasn’t easy, and after witnessing Ellen’s drive, resilience and physical and mental stamina over the course of this record run I feel comfortable saying that if it had been any other sailor in the world aboard B&Q (except perhaps Joyon himself) the record would not be falling. She’s that special, and that good. Here’s the latest daily report. And here’s what Ellen had to say on her most recent call:
“The last 24 hours have been absolutely horrendous. We’ve had everything from full on gusts of 40 knots in the tail end of a storm, we’ve had huge sea states at the end of yesterday after the storm in the north, we sailed out of that sea state during the night still with some very strong gusts and we had to tack in a small low pressure system, off the north of Spain and that’s proved very, very complicated. What we thought would be one tack on a shift off to the north ended up being seven tacks during the night. I had 100 degree wind shifts which lasted for 45 minutes which meant I had to tack and then came back again. It’s been very, very variable very, very tough. And unbelieveably cold out here…
I’m absolutely exhausted, I had about 15 minutes sleep I think through the night, there has been ships everywhere, rain squalls. We had the wind direction changing. At one point the boat tacked itself because the wind shift was so great so! It’s been a full on night and I am very, very tired. I was hoping to be in before sunset tonight but that looks absolutely impossible now, so I’m just going to have to hang in here and just try and hold on until the finish.
Getting to land is a strange thing to say because it’s been a long time since we’ve even seen land. We didn’t see Cape Horn, all I’ve seen have seen are the Islands in the South Atlantic. There’s not been a lot of land sighted from B&Q so the thought of coming back to land is pretty novel in itself. I’m very much looking forward to getting in, to seeing all the team, my friends and family and all the supporters. I can’t wait to get in. It’s been a very, very long trip and an exceptionally hard one. I’ll be glad to be crossing that finish line and finally feeling a little bit of relief.”
Sailing a multihull solo is so much more stressful than a monohull. I wonder if Ellen was surprised by the difference, and whether it will affect how much more she goes on to do in this boat. She certainly didn’t seem to having much fun. Anyhow, here’s what she looked like crossing the Bay Of Biscay, thanks to a rendevous with the Royal Navy…
The Earthist Chronicles 