The road to recovery

The Daily Sail talks to Emma Richards about leg 1 of Around Alone

She says that sleep deprevation didn't prove too much of a problem, although it was not as regimented as she would have liked. "The first couple of days, I didn’t sleep at all, because there was so much shipping and buoys and everything. I probably got more sleep in the last couple of days when we were on the wind and I was in a good routine. I slept much better when there was no genniker involved..." No surprises there.

"But it was all coping strategy as opposed to a well planned sleep schedule. It's really as soon as you are exhausted and need to sleep you try and lie down for half an hour. So there's been no great progress on the sleep pattern."

She claims to have only ever hallucinated once - during the 1999 Transat Jacques Vabre she sailed with Miranda Merron. "I was sure there was someone standing next to the mast when Miranda was asleep. I remember thinking it was Ed Danby who was on Mike Golding's boat at the time. And I remember thinking 'what the hell's he doing on board!'"

Having sailed already this year on board both Amer Sports Too in the Volvo Ocean Race and Maiden II, both heavily crewed boats, Richards admits she is royally sick of freeze dried food and doesn't carry any on Pindar.

"The food's brilliant. It's all couscous, noodles, cuppa soups those flat placks of tuna from the supermarket. It's a little bit heavier but not much. Plus cereal and dried milk. I just don’t think freeze dried is very good for you. And it is not that much heavier to have couscous and noodles, cuppa soups - they're all dried anyway. And then I have bags of fruit and nuts which we had on the Volvo. It’s everything that I like, so I'm going to eat it more than some freeze dried meals which you simply don't like so you simply don't eat it. It is a lot better for you to feel good."

We also prise out of her that she demolished an entire jar of peanut butter and jelly left over from the prologue. Aside from this she jokes that Around Alone is the best detox health farm possible even if it is a little extreme.

It is when we are taking about how she got on with the weather that Richards lets slip what is perhaps her main motivation for taking part in this event. "It feels good to be doing your own weather routing and you own way of doing stuff and to get it right. It's no bad feeling."

Despite the pain, frustration, fear, danger, lack of sleep, exhaustion and terrible food, there are 12 other singlehanded skippers currently in Brixham who would no doubt agree with her.