Feb 8, 2005 3 min read

LONDON (AP) – Ellen MacArthur has endured stormy seas, 65 mph winds, a broken sail, burns, bruises and exhaustion – even a close encounter with a whale. Now, after 26,000 miles and nearly 70 days on the ocean, she is nearing the solo around-the-world sailing record. The 28-year-old Englishwoman needs to reach the finish line – between Ushant, France, and the south coast of England – by 2:04 a.m. EST on Wednesday to break the mark.

“There is definitely still a chance to break the record as long as I don’t hit anything or break anything between where I am now and the finish line,” MacArthur wrote on her Web site early Monday.

“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.”

MacArthur’s journey began Nov. 28. Since then, she has slept an average of 30 minutes at a time and four hours in any day. She has reheated freeze-dried meals on a single burner stove while living area measuring 5 feet by 61/2 feet. Her water supply is desalinated from the sea.

She spent Christmas Day in a storm, but after crossing the halfway mark at Cape Horn on New Year’s Eve she built a four-day lead on the pace set by rival Francis Joyon. A week later, during the worst storms of MacArthur’s career, she badly burned her arm on a generator. MacArthur twice had to climb the 98-foot mast to repair mainsail damage.

“What I have done wrong to deserve this?” she wrote in an e-mail Jan. 20. “Everything we worked so hard for we are losing. It is so unfair. It has never been so hard.”

Struggling in bad weather, MacArthur fell a day behind Joyon. By late January, she was back in contention after crossing the equator. Her 75-foot boat hit a large fish and nearly struck a whale, and then light winds threatened. A storm helped push her back in the lead.

The around-the-world record has been attempted only five times in a multihull, the fastest and most extreme class of boats on the ocean. Only one person has been successful – Joyon, who set the mark of 72 days, 22 hours, 54 minutes and 22 seconds, in February 2004.

Joyon, a Frenchman, set his record in a 90-feet trimaran, IDEC. He broke the record of 93 days, 3 hours and 57 minutes set by Michel Desjoyeaux in the 2000-01 around-the-world Vendee Globe race, which is contested by 60-foot monohulls.

MacArthur grew up in landlocked Derbyshire in northern England. Her love of the sea began when she went sailing with her aunt in a dinghy at age 4. She then spent years reading about sailing while saving money from her school lunches to buy her own dinghy at 13. By 18, MacArthur had sailed solo around Britain, the steppingstone to competitive sailing.

In February 2001, MacArthur became the fastest woman and youngest person to sail alone around the world. She finished second in the Vendee Globe race, taking just more than 94 days.

She was greeted in France by 35,000 people lining the coast. British Prime Minister Tony Blair called to congratulate her and she finished second to English soccer star David Beckham in a sports personality of the year award.

In 2003 MacArthur failed in a bid to set the fastest nonstop circumnavigation of the globe when her mast broke in the Indian Ocean.

Last June, shortly before embarking on her latest venture, MacArthur fell 75 minutes short of a solo trans-Atlantic record.

Now, with a little more clear sailing, a record of a different sort awaits.