Ellen through the Archipelago

A report on the girl wonder's race with Greg Homann

For her first race of the season, Ellen MacArthur chose The Archipelago Raid, renowned for being one of the most testing races that any small catamaran sailor can experience. This year was no exception.

The 500-mile course around the 100,000 islands in the Swedish, Finnish and Aland archipelagos is an unforgiving combination of short nights, fast sailing, constantly changing weather conditions and perilous rocks hidden just beneath the surface of the water. This race is designed to challenge even the most hardened sailor which is what attracts experienced sailors, endurance racers as well as sailors who are very familiar with the archipelagos from a whole range of nationalities, 10 different countries this time.

In a tight battle over the start line, the fleet of 22 two-man teams in Formula 18 catamarans set off from Stockholm on Friday 13th June and headed straight out into the wild and beautiful archipelago for six days and five nights orienteering from checkpoint to checkpoint. This eighth edition of the Raid was slightly different as it lasted an extra day, really pushing the teams to the limit. On the plus side, however, use of a GPS was now permitted rather than having to rely purely on charts. By day 3, Ellen and crew Greg Homann experienced an irreparable problem with their headsail furler that meant they were unable to furl up their headsail properly. This made paddling in calmer waters extremely difficult.

Both Ellen and Greg have relatively little experience sailing this type of catamaran and had only sailed together twice before doing the Raid, but in spite of this they managed to hold onto a respectable position amongst the top 12 boats in the fleet and finished 9th, on Wednesday 18 June at 14:37:00 hrs GMT.

This was the second time round for both Ellen and Greg. Greg took part in 2005 with team Hobie Sweden. Ellen was obliged to retire from the Raid with a leg injury in 2003 when she took part with current BT Team Ellen teammate Nick Moloney so was delighted to finish this time.

An exhausted Ellen speaking on her return to Stockholm said: "We are both absolutely exhausted now but we have really enjoyed Archipelago Raid, in spite of the problems we have had with our furler and rudder. This is a very different kind of sailing to the one I'm used to with lots of different tactics involved both when sailing and when recuperating, and it's been interesting getting to grips with this. Both Greg and I have learned a lot about sailing this type of boat over the last six days. Even though we were both extremely tired at times we still managed to laugh a lot! I'm sure that that gave us the strength and energy to continue. It has been a fantastic event and its great to have finished! "

More photos on page 2....