Sailing: MacArthur's magical adventure continues

She just calls it getting on with things. "That's what my life has been all about, getting on with things," says Ellen MacArthur, who ticked off another successful campaign with a magnificent win on Saturday in the Route du Rhum singlehanded race from St Malo to Guadeloupe.

The remarkable progress of the 26-year old from Derbyshire continues and shows no sign of abating just yet. She first won recognition on the sports pages when winning the Young Yachtsman of the Year, completing the Mini Transat in a 21-footer, and winning the 50-foot class of the Route du Rhum in 1998. From that point her career has taken off. With the Kingfisher group sponsorship funding a new 60-footer, she won the singlehanded transatlantic race from Plymouth on its racing debut, but then really started making waves in the public consciousness with her incredible performance in the Vendée Globe non-stop singlehanded round the world race in late 2000.

In 100 days MacArthur made the transition to the news pages, and the wider broadcast media, as Britain woke up to the fact that it had not only a new sports phenomenon, but an up-and-at-'em hero. Not that she wanted the notoriety, and the rewards which fame brings have sometimes been more costly in personal terms than they have been beneficial in purely financial terms.

Since the Vendée Globe she has been racing both on her 60-footer Kingfisher and, alongside Alain Gautier, on the 60-foot trimaran Foncia. She also took twice as long as she thought to complete a book, which, she claims, cost her more blood, sweat and tears than the stress of having to climb 85 feet of mast above the deck of her yacht to make repairs as the wind howled around her, the boat rolled and pitched, forcing her to hang on for dear life just to stop herself being thrown free, and then battered and bruised.

After she had banked the latest win and an impressive piece of silverware, she admitted that in the first five days of the race she had slept a total of nine hours, and even then in "pretty grim conditions". That meant just crashing on the floor, still in full oilskins, and very damp.

"At times I would say to myself: 'I need some sleep, this is crazy'." All good MacArthur stuff. And when she adds: "If there is one souvenir I come out of this race with, it is one of pleasure. I really enjoyed being out there," she is being entirely honest. She just loves to go sailing, loves to compete, and works very hard at being better. When told she had beaten Yves Parlier's 1994 record by two days and five hours, she asked in her typical wide-eyed way: "Are you shitting me?" The focus would have been on drawing the best out of herself and the boat.

The boat is something she does care about. Her shore crew will sail it back to England and into an uncertain future, but it was a piece of equipment with which she felt bonded. "It is hard getting used to the idea that I will have to leave it. On the solo front this is farewell and it couldn't have finished on a higher note. I think I would have felt a lot different if the result hadn't been so good.

Nor did she have care against whom she was racing. "I see no difference between the French and the English as I feel European above everything else. When you are racing, everyone is equal and you have to battle against the others regardless of nationality." She did not, she said, care about which flag was on the back of a yacht.

For their part, the Guadeloupians did not care either, welcoming MacArthur late on Friday night as they would one of their own, with thousands lining the beaches at Pointe-à-Pitre shouting "Ellen! Ellen!" as pulled up to dock. They appreciated not only MacArthur's sea skills in negotiating the treacherous conditions which included a storm that prompted MacArthur to confess she had "never seen anything like it in my life". Of the 18 big multihulls that set sail from St Malo on 10 November, 15 have all been forced to withdraw because of rough winds. Several capsized, although no one has been seriously injured.

MacArthur lit signal flares in celebration and held them aloft while standing on her boat. She also popped open a bottle of champagne. "I was continually thinking of the finish line, but I could never have imagined a better finish," she said. "For me it's been a very special race. Very, very hard tactically without respite. You have to be at your best all the time and I couldn't have given more. I'm so happy."

For Mike Golding, who also beat the 1994 record despite being beaten into second place, there were mixed feelings about that. "It was a good result and I am pleased with it," he said. "I had lots of fun and it's an extraordinary result. Not that we don't deserve to be where we are, but as an indication of how far we have come in the last four or five years. We are now winning the major French events." It had been, he said, "probably the toughest singlehanded race I have ever done. The pressure was relentless."

The highlight was hearing that a scan had revealed that the baby he is expecting with wife Andrea next March is a son and is well. There had also been another dose of frustration. His yacht had run aground on the northern tip of New Zealand when leading the Around Alone race four years ago. He had been dismasted within hours of the start of the same Vendée Globe which brought fame to Ellen, a long slog a week behind the fleet for him.

Now he was second again, but he insisted: "I really believed I could win this race. We have to figure out what we are doing. We want to be first." Under a new five-year deal with Kingfisher, though with much more emphasis on the French companies in the group, MacArthur already has the next two projects lined up.

The first begins immediately. She had bought the 100-foot catamaran Orange from Bruno Peyron after he had set a new record for sailing round the world and with it the Jules Verne Trophy. That boat, refitted, with a new mast, and in the livery of Kingfisher II moves from Cowes to France next month for a programme of testing and training ahead of MacArthur's own assault on that record in January.

Work is also continuing on putting together her own assault on Europe's 60-foot trimaran circuit. As 15 of the 18 of them which started the multihull division of the Route du Rhum failed to complete the course – sinkings, structural damage and sheer fear were their undoing – there will be some cause for thought on the design front.

A major question mark has been thrown over their suitability to race offshore and so many of the new boats have been damaged that a lot of work needs to be done before what had been a most impressive fleet can reassemble for next season.

ELLEN MacARTHUR THE LIFE AND TIMES

Born: July 8, 1976, Derbyshire.

1995: Named Young Navigator of the Year in the UK.

1996: Third in the Quebec-Saint-Malo in a Class 2 monohull.

1997: Raced 4,000m single-handed across the Atlantic over 33 days in the Mini Transat race in a 21-foot boat.

1998: Winner of the Open 50 class in the Route du Rhum, despite the failure of her keel hydraulics. Named BT/YJA Yachtsman of the Year in the UK and "Sailing's Young Hope" in France.

1999: Winner of the European Race with Yves Parlier. Fourth in the Fastnet with Yvan Bourgnon. Sixth in the Jacques Vabre Transatlantic.

2000: Winner of the English Transatlantic (Europe 1 New Man Star).

2001: World champion FICO. Second in IMOCA World Championship. Wins international acclaim, as well as becoming a superstar in France, when she finishes second to Michel Desjoyeaux in the Vendée Globe single-handed round the world race. Second in Jacques Vabre transatlantic with Alain Gautier. Winner in the EDS Atlantic Challenge. Wins the Mondial Assistance challenge in 10 days from Cherbourg to Tarragona via the Azores.

2002: Wins monohull class of Route du Rhum.