Emma Richards update

Battered and bruised but landed in Cape Town after 30 days of solo racing

Coming in she slept very little and made the effort to go out and see fourth placed Graham Dalton come in - only to fall asleep on the welcome boat and miss it all!
"The last few days coming in I was really exhausted. I was determined not to lose ground to Thierry and since then we’ve had lots of conversations about how Bernard and Thierry have got fractional reachers and so they have more sail area, lower whereas I was on solent and main, there were on a smaller reacher and reefed and just them describing what their sail combinations were and what they were doing, well no wonder I was losing those miles at the end when it was perfect reaching conditions and they were blast reaching, holding 18 knots while I was doing 18 knots in the bursts, but was always dipping and my average was lower.

"I haven’t got a fractional option. I've got a fractionally rigged Solent, but I’ve got a masthead forestay, so that’s not even an option. And they were saying 'oh, you’ll have to have one of these for the Southern Ocean for the next two big legs,' 'well yeah, but I can’t'. So they’ve fully psyched me out within two days of my getting here.”

With the America's Cup on, plus this week's carnage in the Route du Rhum, Around Alone has not been grabbing the headlines particularly with what appear to be predictable results.

"It probably is the form, but I nearly broke the form which is good," admits Emma. "It is the order it should have happened, but it wasn’t like that from the beginning. I spent a lot of time in second place and I showed them I was in there for a race and I wasn’t just going to follow them in like the pecking order."

Winner Bernard Stamm sailed a slightly different race and seemed to be constantly to the west of Pindar and Solidaires. "Bernard was doing slightly different tactics – then whenever me or Thierry made a slight move eastwards he was definitely coming in about covering us. And then at the end he was ahead and had to duck under an extra high which was going to be a bit further north by the time we got there – we got to cut the corner a little more than him which was good. He couldn’t have done anything different tactically."

With Emma's performance - current form suggests that she is more than capable of winning a leg in Around Alone provided she can keep the boat together - along with that of Ellen MacArthur, Mike Golding and her old stable mate Miranda Merron, it is a good period for British solo sailing. "Three boats in the top six of the Route du Rhum," Emma agrees. "It’s fantastic - we’re really beating the French at their own game, which is good. To have three Brits in the top six of a Route du Rhum race is big news I think."

Long may it last.