Mark Turner

Ellen's Project Director discusses their plans for the future, life, the universe, etc...

Turner sailed with Ellen on part of the EDS Atlantic Challenge

What now?

On 3 January, press day at London Boat Show, Ellen's sailing plans for the next five years will be announced. Although at present this is top secret, Turner says we will be in for a surprise. Having spent an action-packed season sailing with Alain Gautier all the indicators have suggested that Ellen might take to trimaran sailing full time, particularly with the class' number one event - the Route du Rhum - taking place next November. But Turner says this is not likely to be the case.

"It won't be what anyone imagines. In France, all journalists and many other people think that we've been secretly building a 60ft trimaran somewhere over here and we're going to burst forward and do the Route du Rhum. But that's unlikely to be in the plan."

When we spoke no sponsorship agreement had been signed for Ellen's five year plan, but finding her sponsorship one hopes should not present too much of a problem. One of the many extraordinary facts from the Kingfisher story is the return on investment her sponsors received. While Ellen provided the story, back on shore Turner relentlessly milked it for all it was worth and the media evaluation, which he says represents around 70% of the actual coverage internationally, amounted to an advertising value of £46.7 million. Not a bad return on an initial investment of £1.8 million.

Turner's role in this was to help Ellen get as good a result as possible and to ensure that the project gave the optimum amount back to her sponsors. For Turner and MacArthur the job was made all the harder as her retail giant sponsor has businesses six countries and they had to service local demand in all these countries. To prepare Ellen on the water, get the boat up to speed and copy with their sponsor's demands, the pace was frantic.

Such was Ellen's success in the Vendee, that if anything the pace became worse in the weeks after the finish. As a result since then both Turner and MacArthur have been making a considerable to slow their lifestyles down. "None of us want to maintain a high profile for a very long time, because it is a very stressful existence," he admits. Since the end of February they have put little effort into pushing Ellen's PR. This has given them some respite and Turner remarks that he is surprised she has managed to maintain her profile. "Her profile has never been stronger in France. It could have been a flash in the pan: finish the Vendee - end of story."

Being front page news for such a long period of time together with the fame and the offers of lucrative deals on the back of this, may have affected lesser people, but Turner says this is not the case with Ellen. "I don't think anything has fundamentally changed with Ellen, her person or with the way we try to approach things. The thing which has clearly changed is the demand for her time and that massively outstrips the supply basically and that does force you to work in different ways and creates some difficult circumstances - trying to balance training, racing, media, sponsor needs and the new variable - having a personal life outside of those. For three years neither of us have had a personal life of any shape so that's important for us going forward."

Continued on page 3...