Unassuming British yachtswoman born in
1976 and famous for her dedication to her sport, which has been her sole ambition ever since her childhood in
Derbyshire. Derbyshire's in the
East Midlands, and not exactly known for its wide expanses of water beyond, presumably, a reservoir or two. Then again, supposedly even the Swiss have got a
navy, unless that's just a trademark for
Swiss army knives that come in blue.
MacArthur credits her aunt's sailing holidays with giving her the bug, which prompted her to save up three years' worth of
dinner money to buy an 8-foot long
dinghy. By the time she was 18, she'd sailed single-handed around the British coast and was camping under the hull of a 21-foot
Classe Mini that she was refitting in a French dockyard.
She secured the sponsorship that would let her keep racing, and with a roof over her head too, by winning her class of the solo race across the
Atlantic Ocean, the
Route du Rhum, despite an unpleasant incident with her
keel hydraulics. MacArthur was taken to French hearts before she began to make news in Britain:
sailing now has a higher profile in France than in the country that brought you
Sir Francis Drake in any case, and she's surely channelling a little of
Joan of Arc At Sea for them too.
So far her greatest achievement, and the one that made her name in the UK, is her second place in the
Vendée Globe race of
2001, another solo effort in which contestants attempt to
circumnavigate the globe.
To the untrained eye they seem to spend an awful lot of time circling around
Antarctica, but the plan's actually to hit the
Cape of Good Hope,
Cape Horn and
Cape Leeuwin along the way.
Not hit, you understand. I'm sure it wouldn't be a good idea.
The Vendée Globe typically takes around a hundred days, although MacArthur completed it in 94, keeping in touch with the media all the while through the wonders of
satellite phones. Living on 20-minute
catnaps and tinned rations, she spent the
Southern Ocean sections of the race shinning up the mast in freezing winds to repair an uncooperative
mainsail, rounding icebergs and scooping
flying fish off the deck of her
trimaran Kingfisher.
Although she came out of the
Doldrums in first place,
Kingfisher broke her rudder less than 2,500 miles from the finish line at
Les Sables d'Olonne, and the Frenchman
Michele Desjoyeaux came home a day ahead, setting the record for the fastest single-handed circumnavigation of the planet - MacArthur's time still making her the fastest woman.
MacArthur sailed back across the
Channel a household name, making a token appearance at the
International Boat Show before setting off once again into the Atlantic to win the
Challenge Mondial race as navigator to
Alain Gautier.
Finishing 2001 as sailing's world champion on points, she was nominated as
BBC Sports Personality of the Year but lost out to the ubiquitous
David Beckham. Such is apparently the price of not spending one's
sporting life moonlighting as a salesman for
Pepsi,
Brylcreem and assorted children's clothes, but even
John Galliano would find it difficult to make a fashion must-have out of MacArthur's signature
big yellow raincoat.
In
2002 MacArthur returned to the
Route du Rhum, this time winning the overall title with a record time of 13 and a half days, and published her autobiography
Taking On the World. While the
celebrity confessional has become notorious for providing
tabloids with several days' worth of headlines and
discount bookshops with a reason for living, MacArthur's possibly the least likely woman in the public eye to shock the nation with tales of her
romps, although unfortunately, one can't speak for the discount bookshops.
2003 saw MacArthur set off on
January 30 for an attempt at the
Jules Verne Trophy, a prize awarded for the fastest circumnavigation of the world in any sailing boat. Her choice was the 115-foot catamaran
Kingfisher II, the yacht - then called
Orange - in which
Bruno Peyron had set the 64-day record. Difficulties with Kingfisher II's
mast track delayed her start for two days until
Tracey Edwards, herself attempting a different record, stepped in and lent MacArthur the mast track from her own
Maiden II, one of
Kingfisher's sister ships.
The Trophy race marked the first occasion MacArthur had competed with a sizeable crew, after making her name as a solo sailor. The thirteen men also aboard, for whom MacArthur was responsible as
skipper, included
Hervé Jan, twice a winner of the Jules Verne. Their record attempt lasted until
February 2003, when the yacht's mast came down altogether, narrowly missing the three crew members on deck at the time. MacArthur had been 20 hours ahead of Peyron's record, although still two days behind another challenger,
Olivier de Kersauson.
At one point during the Vendée Globe - but probably not when she'd just been up the mainmast - MacArthur told her satellite phone, 'I'd like to do this again in ten years, just for the hell of it,' a kind of passion mere
landlubbers can only wonder at.
The inevitable
biopic is sure to come around, and
Winona Ryder can probably expect to be called upon; she'd have the looks, after all, and it's not as if Winona could walk off with a
yacht...