It’s a far cry from scudding around peaceful Ogston Reservoir, near Alfreton, in an 8ft dinghy, to navigating the tumultuous seas around the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn.
But it’s a journey which record-breaking solo round-the-world yachtswoman Dame Ellen McArthur has taken in her stride.
She gained international renown in 2005 when she broke the world record for the fastest-ever solo circumnavigation of the globe.
During her epic trip, MacArthur set records for the fastest solo voyage to the Equator, past the Cape of Good Hope, past Cape Horn and back to the Equator again.
Ironically, Ellen Patricia MacArthur was born in 1976 about as far from the sea as is possible in Britain, at Whatstandwell, on the banks of the Derwent, where her parents had a smallholding. Both her parents, Avril and Ken, were teachers, and she has two brothers, Fergus and Lewis.
MacArthur has said she acquired her early interest in sailing from her desire to emulate her idol, Sophie Burke, and also after reading Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons books, set in the Lake District. She has since become the Patron of the Nancy Blackett Trust which owns and operates Ransome’s yacht, Nancy Blackett.
But she gained her first real experience of sailing at the age of four on a boat owned by her aunt Thea MacArthur on the East Coast of England.
‘I’ll never forget that feeling as a kid of setting foot on a boat for the first time,’ she told an American cable news channel in 2019. ‘To see this little world – and it was a small boat – but it had little bunks, a little cabin, a kitchen. It kind of struck me that this boat had everything we needed to take us anywhere in the world. And as a child, that opened up everything.’
She continued: ‘I knew then that I wanted to sail around the world. As a kid, that was the goal. I had no idea how to get there – growing up in the Derbyshire countryside, it wasn’t the most obvious career path – but I knew that was what I wanted to do at some stage.’
Recalling her childhood again, she told The Guardian: ‘The biggest gift mum and dad gave me was freedom. When I was 12, I’d be off with my dog, Mac, messing about in the woods or fields and there was never any: ‘Where are you going?’ I was out there having adventures, exploring. They let me follow my dreams.’
But what her parents didn’t know was that young Ellen had been saving her school dinner money for three years to buy a boat. She named that 8ft dinghy Threp’ny Bit – even though decimalisation had taken place five years before she was born. And she taped a real 12-sided threepenny bit coin onto the bow as she learned the rudiments of sailing on tranquil Ogston Reservoir.
MacArthur attended the County Infant and Junior School and the Anthony Gell School in Wirksworth and worked at a sailing school in Kingston-upon-Hull during her holidays.
When she was 17, MacArthur bought a Corribee sailing yacht and named it Iduna. She described the first moment she saw it as ‘love at first sight’, and in 1995 she sailed Iduna on a single-handed circumnavigation of Britain.
In 1997, MacArthur finished 17th in the Mini Transat solo transatlantic race after fitting out her 21f Classe Mini yacht Le Poisson herself while she was living in a French boatyard.
She was named the 1998 British Telecom/Royal Yachting Association Yachtsman of The Year in the UK and Sailing’s Young Hope in France.
In June 2000, MacArthur sailed the monohull Kingfisher from Plymouth to Rhode Island, USA, in 14 days, 23 hours and 11 minutes. This was the record for a single-handed woman monohull east-to-west passage, and also the record for a single-handed woman in any vessel.
International recognition followed in 2001 when MacArthur came second in the Vendée Globe solo round-the-world sailing race in Kingfisher. At 24, she was the youngest competitor to complete the voyage and her time of 94 days, four hours and 25 minutes is still the world record for a single-handed, non-stop, monohull circumnavigation by a woman.
MacArthur was subsequently appointed an MBE for her services to sport. In 2003, she set up the Ellen MacArthur Trust (now the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust), a registered charity taking young people aged between eight and 24 sailing to help them regain their confidence on their way to recovery from cancer, leukaemia and other serious illnesses.
In 2003, she captained a round-the-world record attempt for a crewed yacht in the catamaran Kingfisher 2 but was thwarted by a broken mast in the Southern Ocean.
The specially-designed 75ft trimaran named B&Q/Castorama – which took into account MacArthur’s tiny, 5ft 2in height – was unveiled in January 2004.
MacArthur’s first record attempt using the new yacht was to break the west–east transatlantic crossing time in June 2004. She sailed the 27,000 miles from Lower New York Bay to Lizard Point, Cornwall, in seven days, three hours and 50 minutes.
This set a new world record for a transatlantic crossing by a woman, beating the previous record by a crewed boat as well as the singlehanded version.
She began her momentous attempt to break the solo record for sailing non-stop around the world in the B&Q/Castorama in November 2004.
She crossed the finishing line near the French coast at Ushant in February 2005, beating the previous record by one day, eight hours, 35 minutes and 49 seconds.
Her time of 71 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes and 33 seconds is the world record for the 27,354 nautical miles (50,660 km) covered (an average speed of 15.9 knots), beating the previous record set by French sailor Francis Joyon.
She recalled she had no more than 20 minutes sleep at a time during the whole voyage, because she had to be on constant lookout for shipping and other hazards 24 hours a day. Fellow round-the-world yachtsman Robin Knox-Johnston described MacArthur’s time as ‘an amazing achievement.’
Following her return to England, it was announced in February 2005 that she was to be made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in recognition of her achievements. It is believed that at the time she was the youngest ever recipient of this honour.
MacArthur was honoured immediately after the event, rather than appearing in due course in the New Year’s or Birthday Honours lists. This swift recognition was reminiscent of accolades previously bestowed on fellow round-the-world sailors, Francis Drake in 1580 and Francis Chichester in 1967.
MacArthur was also granted the rank of Honorary Lieutenant Commander, Royal Naval Reserve on the same day.
She was also appointed a Knight (Chevalier) of the French Legion of Honour by President Nicolas Sarkozy in March 2008, having lived in France for some time, and being a fluent French speaker.
In 2009 McArthur appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. Her chosen book, questioned by host Kirsty Young as perhaps being ‘perhaps too useful’, was The SAS Survival Handbook.
‘But it’s a book,’ MacArthur innocently responded. Her luxury item was her fluffy purple ‘slinky’ worm mascot, which she had taken with her on all her marathon voyages.
That same year, MacArthur announced her intention to retire from competitive racing to concentrate on the subject of resource and energy use in the global economy.
In 2010, she unveiled the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF), a charity that works with business and education to accelerate the transition to a circular economy.
MacArthur now works with local and national governments, scientists and key industry sectors to understand how on land we rely on finite resources in the form of materials, energy and water.
In May 2017, the MacArthur Foundation and the Prince of Wales International Sustainability Unit launched a two million US dollar prize fund for innovations which work towards the management of waste plastics.
The Foundation is also a founding member and partner of the Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy (PACE), which was launched by the World Economic Forum. MacArthur was awarded the 2022 Princess of Asturias Award for International Cooperation in Oviedo, Spain for her work with her Foundation.
MacArthur published her first autobiography entitled Taking on the World in 2002. Later, she wrote Race Against Time, published in 2005, a day-by-day account of her record journey around the world, and in September 2010, she published a third autobiography entitled Full Circle.
MacArthur now lives in the British capital of yachting – Cowes on the Isle of Wight. There is a display featuring MacArthur at the Wirksworth Heritage Centre.
MacArthur has always reached for the stars, but perhaps the ultimate accolade to her was when Asteroid 20043 Ellenmacarthur, a large rock orbiting the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, was named after her in June last year.
