To the wire

Ellen MacArthur just minutes behind transat record

Elapsed Time: 06d19h50m
Ahead/behind record: -5nm, 0h17.4m Behind

Existing record: 7d2h34m42s
Distance covered: 2753
Distance to finish: 102
Position: 49 39 50N, 07 47 38W
Average boat speed (VMG) towards finish so far: 16.79 knots
Average boat speed (VMG) now required to beat record: 15.11 knots
Current boat speed: 15.1 knots

Ellen MacArthur has an evening's worth of sailing left in her attempt to break Laurent Bourgnon's record for crossing the north Atlantic singlehanded. At present the record could not be closer with Ellen just 17 minutes short.

However many hurdles remain over the next few hours. At present the Sevenstones Lightship off the Scilly Isles is recording the wind direction as being 250degT at 14 knots, but this is set to drop to 10 knots over the course of this evening. The wind direction which is almost dead downwind and is forcing Ellen to gybe. The tide sailing up the Cornish coast is also against Ellen until midnight tonight.

Ellen must finish before 0:44:42 GMT (01:44:42) tomorrow morning if she is going to break the record.

Ellen reported the following at 1300GMT today:

Right now, we are sailing along in a breeze that is decreasing - we had about 20-22 knots all morning and now it is falling and oscillating in direction and our average in the last hour has been under 20 knots and it looks like it is going to be hard to maintain that right through to the finish. I just did a calculation for our average speeds that we need to maintain to break the record which is 16.2 knots which is pretty high when we see the breeze may be on its way out. So it's absolutely touch and go and unbelievably stressful.

For the moment the wind is holding out in the south-westerly sector which means that I am still on starboard gybe and if it stays like this, which is doubtful, I will be able to hold this quite a long way in. But what looks like is going to happen is that although I am pointing at the line right now, as the breeze shifts round I am going to start pointing south of the line and I'm going to have to take a very unfavourable gybe into the finish line which is going to be really, really bad news but for the moment all we can do is sail as fast as we can on this heading to the line and just hope that the breeze holds in there.

It's not over, till it's over... We have a chance of breaking the record, it's a small one and it's going to take everything we've got to do it... We are in the hands of the weather and we've just go to see what happens with the breeze. It's either going to sit in there and stay in from the south-west and let us finish or it's not.And that's a pretty raw way of looking at it but that's how it is. If the wind strength stays around 20 knots and we have to gybe then its still feasible but if decreases below 20 and we have to gybe then it looks like we won't make it.