A Star to Sail Her By

9 February 2005



MacArthur Sets Circumnavigation Record

Ferdinand Magellan gets credit for being the first to do it, although his expedition finished the voyage after he died. Joshua Slocum was the first to do it solo over a centruy ago. Ellen MacArthur is the most recent. She sailed around the world solo, in record time. Yesterday, she was the toast of the British media, and the Queen is going to make her a dame (a female knighthood). Her 71.5 days at sea are life writ small.

The 28-year-old returned to Falmouth, England, after breaking the record of Frenchman Francis Joyon by 33 hours, whose own record knocked weeks off the previous record. There were thousands waiting for her. But for 71 days, she labored alone. In many respects, most athletes do. The Super Bowl, the World Series, the World Cup, the Stanley Cup (when the NHL can be bothered to have a hockey season) draw thousands and millions watch on TV, but few are there when the athletes are lifting weights, running wind sprints or studying video.

Sir Robin Knox-Johnson, who was the first to sail round the world non-stop in 1969 (taking 312 days to do it) said, “That's the common misconception, that it's all down to muscle. Single-handed sailing is in the mind. The size of a person is really very, very secondary." Future Dame Ellen is 5 foot two, but appears to have persistence (or is it pigheadedness) to fill a much bigger frame. Trying and failing is common as dirt. Trying, failing and getting up to try again takes something much different. Saving lunch money to buy a first boat when she had grown up in land-locked Derbyshire suggests Ms. MacArthur has always had that.

Naturally, Ms. MacArthur’s speed and safe return stemmed from technology that Magellan’s crew would never have understood. She could rely on the GPS positioning system, satellite phones, a global weather tracking system and electronic safety beacons. Her drinking water was desalinated ocean water. And her food was free of weevils and other contamination since it was freeze-dried.

That doesn’t diminish her achievement – not when it required sleeping in half hour naps for a maximum of four hours out of every 24. Not when she had to fix her own sails, twice climbing a mast almost 100 feet tall. And she almost ran into a whale; sail boats don’t turn that quickly, and cetaceans of any size always presume they have the right of way.

As for Mr. Joyon, he proved that the French still have gentlemen in their ranks. The BBC quoted him as saying, "I always said that Ellen was a serious customer and she has justified that in the fastest possible time. I thought my record could be broken but I never imagined that Ellen would beat it so soon, and so magnificently."


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.

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