Europe 1 New Man Star - The last 500 miles ...

POSITIONS IN MONOHULL fleet at 0730 GMT FRIDAY

1. KINGFISHER  522 miles to go
2. SILL        +49
3. WHIRLPOOL  +137
4. TG4        +153
5. SOLIDAIRES +171
6. FILA       +193

An extremely tired Ellen MacArthur called in at 0630...

I'm exhausted and aching all over

I was sailing along during the night, under spinnaker, having had two hours or real $^%W$%, loads of small problems, mostly caused by me. I was pretty stressed, and went below, put on the Dolphin CD you gave me, and tried to relax. Suddenly there was a bang and to my horror on deck I saw the kite collapse and fall in to the water. The fitting between the kite and the sock that it is hoisted in had broken, letting it drop quickly in to the sea...then began a 3 hour fight to recover it. I had to sail backwards, blow all the lines and then really struggled as it wrapped itself around the keel. I'm totally drained now, going to have to sleep. My body feels like its been through a mincing machine. I've no idea how I got it back on, once it was in the water the load was enormous. My winch pedestal system is not fully working so I couldn't use that to help either. I'm really exhausted now. But I've got the boat going again, and fortunately the wind has shifted around more to the south, so we're on course again at 11 knots. No idea how many miles I've lost though.

Seems that the Gods shone on her, because despite 3 hours of going backwards, she has managed to keep her lead. Bilou (SILL) must have sailed in to a hole, and at the position fix was tracking NW at 3 knots, whilst the rest of the fleet was charging up behind at 11 knots.

It wasn't to be the last event of the night for Ellen though. A communication just received....

I'm having a nightmare. I had a short sleep after getting the kite sorted, I was so tired. Then I dragged myself back up on deck and got to work to get the boat going again properly. And in the space of 2 hours I've managed to break the furling line on the gennaker furler, have a small probelm with the keel controls and just about everything else that can go wrong, has! Can't believe it...

However, on sharing the news from the 0730 position report, that she in fact had managed to maintain her lead....

Wow! I can't believe it! How can that be? I've got to go, I've got to go and resplice the furler line control and keep it going.

Click. A re-motivated Ellen back on deck and raring to go!

With the best part of a Fastnet race still to go, the leaderboard really could be shaken up again. The distances between the top 6 boats are still small in offshore terms - and with these latest generation of Open 60s capable of very high speeds, in just a few hours it can all change very quickly.

Any one of the leading boats could still break the record set by Yves Parlier in 1992 - arrival would have to be before Sunday, 1710 GMT.

Not only could the second pack catch the first, the battle is in any case raging for third place, with WHIRLPOOL and GROUP 4 swapping places, and SOLIDAIRES (Thierry Dubois) just 12 miles behind Mike Golding. FILA and PRB also remain very much in touch with this group as well.

If you wish, you can email messages of encouragement for Ellen to ellenrace@kingfisherchallenges.com

Updates during the day at www.kingfisherchallenges.com and www.virtualspectator.com