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6 February 2005, 10:07 am

Less Than 400 Miles To Go

Ellen MACARTHUR

Ellen's advance over Francis JOYON's pace has dropped below two days - Joyon was doing 400 mile days at this stage in his record breaking circumnavigation. The distance to go for Ellen is now below 400 miles and the average wind speeds have started to drop as forecast, but are still 25 to 30 knots, gusting 35.

Ellen will be forced more and more off the direct route now as wind moves to the right, and her objective is to get east as fast as possible to get to new SE wind allowing her to point at the finish.

B&Q is currently just a handful of miles away from two of the Vendee Globe (solo race around world) boats, TEMENOS (Dom WAVRE,fourth) and VMI (Seb JOSSE,fifth). Ellen spoke to Seb a few weeks ago, as they wished each other luck, and Dom and Ellen competed against each other in the last, 2000-1 edition, of the Vendee Globe. These two guys have been fighting it out neck and neck since Cape Horn, on their way to the finish in Les Sables.

At 09:31 GMT Ellen reported hard disk failure on her main navigation computer. It's pretty extraordinary that the Sony VAIO laptops that power the info systems onboard B&Q have survived 70 days without a glitch, despite continual pounding way beyond their spec...but last night's storm was the last straw for one of the two hard disks. At 0750 Charles DARBYSHIRE, OC's Technology Manager, received a 'stressed' call to report nav machine had totally failed. Just seven minutes later, she had replaced the hard disk with a mirrored backup unit,and was up and running again...preparation counts!

Team Ellen Media (As Amended by ISAF)