A Boat of One's Own.(Ellen MacArthur)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)

A sudden gale hit in the middle of the Atlantic. Swirling winds rocked the 60-foot Kingfisher from side to side and spun it in circles. Lashed by rain, sailor Ellen MacArthur clung for three hours to the top of the mast. Eventually she scaled back down--bruised, battered and shaking. "I'm totally exhausted," she reported in an e-mail later. "My leg is black from the bruises, I've got scratches and holes all over me. I really didn't know how I was going to make it down... It was brutal."

And that was just one day. Day 80, to be exact, out of 100 or so that MacArthur will have spent at sea before she sets foot again on dry land. The 5-foot-2, 24-year-old Englishwoman is the youngest sailor ever to compete in the Vendee Globe, a singlehanded, 26,000-mile race so grueling it's called the Everest of sailing. MacArthur has been among the front runners since the race began in November off Les Sables d'Olonne on France's southwestern coast. She and 23 other sailors have circumnavigated Antarctica and rounded Cape Horn, and now are heading back across the Atlantic to Les Sables--with MacArthur hot on the tail of first-place Michel (Le Professeur) Desjoyeaux. "She impresses me," says Catherine Chabaud, the other woman in the race. "I don't know if it's thoughtlessness due to her age or hypermotivation to be in the lead pack. But sometimes she scares me, especially when I ...