Sailing: MacArthur's multi challenge
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Your support makes all the difference.A dockhead leap, a dash to the airport, and a change of discipline are on Ellen MacArthur's agenda today. Freed from the land-based frustrations of book writing and personal appearances, MacArthur cannot get enough of being back at sea on an ocean race course, and is switching between the single hull racing which brought her to fame and the multihull flyers which she has decided will be the main platform for her future.
Kingfisher, in which she was second in the Vendée Globe non-stop round-the-world race, was last night fighting its old rival, Sill, in the hands of Michel Desjoyeaux at the finish of the first half of a race from Lorient to Genoa.
That was in Lanzarote, where MacArthur hoped she would have just enough time to catch a plane to Madrid, connect with another one to Paris, be driven to Calais, and be on the start line there tomorrow for a 2,500-mile test against nine other 60-foot trimarans.
She joins Alain Gautier again – they plan to have another crack at the Route du Rhum, from St Malo to Guadeloupe together in November – on Foncia with the difficult job of navigating in the Course de Phares (Lighthouse Race) against some of the best multihull sailors France has to offer. The boats go down the Channel, thread their way through some islands off Brittany, down to Lisbon, back north and west round the Fastnet Rock off southern Ireland, inside Bishop Rock off south-west England and back to Calais.
"I am really sad to leave Kingfisher for the second leg of the Rubicon Race, but I know Nick Moloney and the crew will do a good job," said MacArthur, "and I am really looking forward to the multihull as I plan to have my own from 2006."
Back in Lorient, the French challenge for the America's Cup, backed by the nuclear company Areva, launched the first of its two new boats last night and on Monday the Challenger of Record and 2000 Challenger Prada performs a similar ceremony.
In Portsmouth, Lisa McDonald and the crew of Amer Sports Too, delayed by 24 hours and facing the prospect of gale force winds, put in their new mast to replace the one lost on the seventh leg of the Volvo Ocean Race. They plan to sail the 550 miles south to La Rochelle and take part in the eighth leg to Gothenburg, which starts next week.
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