Ellen – Hero or Stunt Act ?

Re: Cobblers

<how come mike g. has escaped all this crap where did he come?>

The crap is about the adulation. Golding has received little or no adulation - therefore no crap.
 
Re: Cobblers

i saw plenty of. come on mike were all behind you. good on ya attitude and not one negative comment.
its a shame ellen never got the same treatment, she has been called everything from a cheat to a winging bore.
please dont get me wrong im not knocking mike i followed him all the way and thought he did wonderfully well and will allways be someone ill look up to, but come on people give the girl a break.
 
Re: Cobblers

<i saw plenty of. come on mike were all behind you. good on ya attitude and not one negative comment.>

I saw plenty of this for Ellen too but....everyone loves the underdog; compassion is one of our better character traits. Many of us felt utmost sympathy for Mike Golding. I think that Ellen would have received similar treatment had she been in his shoes.

Was she called a cheat? I think her reliance on so much shore based expertise - Joyon didn't have weather routing for example - is a valid cause for discussion but I don't think anyone seriously thinks she is a cheat do they?
 
In a way it's like F1 motor racing. Drivers nowadays have launch control for starting (just hold down a button until the lights change then let go of it - car does the rest). They do not change gear up or down, it's all done automatically, and the traction control makes it virtually impossible to spin the car - out of a corner they just floor it and the computer stops it from breaking rear wheel traction. The engine characteristics, fuel burn etc etc can all be adjusted from the pit lane. "All" the driver has to do it steer and brake. You could therefore say that Michael Schumacher is less worthy a World Champion than Fangio who had to do the lot, and you may be right. Depends on your point of view.
 
Becky,
I think you have touched on an interesting perspective on this that I have also been considering.

Much of the achievement in beating this kind of record is not in steering or directly handling the craft (since an autopilot will be doing that) but is in all sorts of other areas. Design, planning and preparation such that you can handle the systems and maintain them is a key factor which many are perhaps overlooking.

What some people are missing is the real nature of the achievement and the skills required. They are quite different and much broader than those that most of us typically use on a weekend trip along the coast. Perhaps we should be thinking in terms of something like Formula 1 where testing, development and more testing (using the skills of the drivers) are just as important to the end result as steering during a race. Of course the same is true in many other areas such as selecting a suitable sail plan for the conditions.

Should we actually be debating what skills are really required to achieve results in this kind of endeavour?
 
An interesting thread, hardly foronic at all.

Personally I cannot understand why anyone would denigrate her achievement . . . I suspect they have never been cold, wet and scared at sea and wondering if they have bitten off more than they could chew.

One thing I am sure of - if Ellen reads this she will have a bit of a chuckle - I doubt if it will put her up or down what us 'butters think.

I wonder if there is an element of jealousy in some of the more critical posts . . . as people realise they may now never fulfil their full potential and that even their fifteen minutes of fame may be a struggle. This feeling that 'I could have done that given the equipment/money/breaks'


IN addition to being a better sailor than most of us could ever aspire to be the woman has an incredible business achievement to her credit as well with Team Ellen. Now at age 28 she is free to do pretty much whatever she wants (well, just a couple more records for the sponsors first). The achievement, as many posters have pointed out, is much more than the sailing itself.

- Nick
 
Re: View from down under might be....

....different if Ellen was a Kiwi?

No not at all Robin. Just taking one example, I have some doubts about some of the kudos given to (or claimed by, perhaps) Peter Blake - if interested some are set out, probably with some exaggeration, in the book The Shape of Speed. I certainly do not make any claim that any NZ'er yachtsmen is closer to God than any other.

The difficulty is that many seem, in the case of Ellen, to take any question about her endeavour or any claim that others may be her equal or better as an insult to both themselves and Ellen. I think Alec raised a very fair question and I think some of the responses show very little understanding of the sailing accomplishments of others and probably indicates insecurity and lack of perspective in some of those respondents, especially the ones who reacted to Alec as if he had castrated them.

Anyway, most of the world says "Who is Ellen?" and even more will have forgotten her next week, so in the end "Who cares?". Not me, there are too many other good yachtsmen out there (or have been out there), and I am sure that many of them are better.

John
 
And sorry to rile you on a pet (pardon the pun) subject, Ships Cat, but James never held the record as she stopped twice

I have no idea what you are carrying on about Salty one. You clearly have not read my posts. I said, in a post -

Naomi James (who was also made a dame, holder of previous solo around world record, although it ended up she did it with a stop due to repairs being needed)

She indeed did hold the solo around the world record, and that cannot be disputed, and I did say she stopped for repairs. At that time she was the fastest around solo, and perhaps doing so even though having to stop adds to the achievement.

I suggest that you carefully read what people are saying before you leap to chop them up over some perception you have created in your own mind that they have slighted your personal God (or in this case godess).

John
 
Re: Ah!

FI drivers do have a lot in common with Ellen. They are prepared to suffer to win. Launch control is very much as you describe it, some of the use a clutch like pedal though. Gear changes are driver controled by means of paddles on the steering wheel. Anyone who used a Hewland box wouln't mind that at all. Traction control has been outlawed for about five years. The pit crew can't alter settings on the car. The technology is available but banned. Like Ellen racing drivers have become subject to micro management. The team know exactly where the car is on the track, what imputs are employed and what forces are resulting. Seat of the pants driving/sailing are just history.

As to the suffering, I've seen drivers get into cars they didn't fit in, because a designer had come up with a novel means of cutting down windage, the car was 9-10th's scale. I've seen drivers drive when they could only hold the bottom of the steering wheel and or change gear with a reverse hand using just fingertips. Drivers have been severly burnt because they've agreed to route the cooling system add on's through the cockpit. I've seen drivers decide to drive knowing their feet are outside the safety cell in the crush zone. I haven't been in any of this generation of F1 cars but, in the 90's most drivers couldn't see ahead at all unless they looked around the nose. Ellen and F1 drivers are very determined.

If you ever see Michael drive a car without the technology, or indeed a go cart, you'll see that he is fit to be mentioned with the very best. Just look how many times he wins in the wet. There isn't any technology that wins for you in the wet.
And I don't even like the bloke.
 
Re: Cobblers

Definition of Hero:
1. In mythology and legend, a man, often of divine ancestry, who is endowed with great courage and strength, celebrated for his bold exploits, and favored by the gods.
2. A person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life: soldiers and nurses who were heroes in an unpopular war.
3. A person noted for special achievement in a particular field: the heroes of medicine. See synonyms at celebrity.
4. The principal male character in a novel, poem, or dramatic presentation.

Well - we can dispose of number 4 - this was no fairy tail!! and number 1, this isn't mythology or legend - it really happened (well she better not have just sat mid atlantic for 2 months!)
I think 2 and 3 do describe it quite well - hero(ine) it is then...
 
Re: Ah!

Sorry, but you are not correct about paddle wheels - they went out some time ago - it's fully automatic now, both up and down, computer controlled. Traction control was banned a number of years ago, but is well and truly back again. M. Schumacher is undoubtedly the best for many years, but my point was you cannot practically compare his ability, to a Champion from 40 years ago, 'cos the technology available to drivers, the circuits, track surface etc etc is vastly different. (There was a, not terribly serious, proposal placed on the table a couple of years ago, not surprisingly laughed out of the room, in which drivers would swap around differing teams cars on a race by race basis. To see Schumacher in a Jordan/Minardi would have been incredible - no doubt he would be further up the grid than they are accustomed.)

This is why, in my opinion, it's not practically possible to compare Ellen with the likes of Chichester/Knox Johnston et al. Who is the better sailor? - it does not matter, they were all the champions of their time.
 
Although the title of the thread was probably a bit provocative, it was not intended to devalue the human element of the voyage but to pose the question of the human/technological / backup balance in modern ocean racing. The whole project could possibly be broken down into many parts and the actual voyage itself as probably only 25% of the success element.

For me, Ellen’s greatest achievement is her single-minded determination to do what she wants to do in life and to develop herself fully as a person. Surely something we should all be doing. I do not think for one minute than she has done any of this to be either famous or to amass great wealth. I remember reading about Joshua Slocum’s response when asked why he sailed around the world. His answer was ‘because I wanted to’ - exactly-.

I have to agree with Ship’s Cat and others, that perhaps a 100 other or so pro sailors could have managed the actual sailing bit equally as well. Unfortunately, many of the web cams kept showing banks of computers and technology behind Ellen when talking, which does not fit in with many of the general public’s (and media's) ideal of what sport and sailing should be like.

The fact is, we still do not know (in the highest form), how good an ALL ROUND sailor Ellen is when compared with the other 100 odd sailors in her particular time scale because of the technology and backup blurring the ability test. It has been very interesting to hear from many responders how they feel about this. After all, it is a sport and not commerce, so why not widen it more than it is ?

Unfortunately, we were denied this contribution from many of the contributors who only seemed to want to ridicule myself or others for posing a question.Overall I would say they have succeed in repressing debate and others from giving it a go in the future. I'am sure that Ellen would not be very pleased about that.
 
[ QUOTE ]
The fact is, we still do not know (in the highest form), how good an ALL ROUND sailor Ellen is when compared with the other 100 odd sailors in her particular time scale because of the technology and backup blurring the ability test

[/ QUOTE ]

Exactly WHAT would she need to do to meet YOUR criteria? She has time, she is still only 28yrs old and I'm sure would like to comply...

ELLEN MACARTHUR'S CV
Sunday, 14 November 2004 at 14:53


Ellen
Image © Offshore Challenges

CAREER HIGHS AND LOWS

Pre-1994
• Aged four, began sailing with aunt on ‘Cabaret’, all spare time reading sailing books.
• Started saving school dinner money at the age of eight to buy her first boat.
• First boat at 13 (‘Threpenny Bit’, dinghy), second at 15 (‘Kestrel’, small keelboat), then third at 17 (‘Iduna’, 21-foot Corribee).

1994
• Debut into full-time yachting, working on an Open 60ft yacht and teaching sailing to adults at the David King Nautical School in Hull.
• Achieved RYA Yachtmaster and Instructor’s ticket, aged 18 (exceptionally young).

1995
• BT/YJA Young Sailor of Year award.
• Sailed ‘Iduna’ single-handed around Great Britain.

1996
• First transatlantic passage leaving Newport, Rhode Island (USA) on Ellen’s 20th birthday.
• First transatlantic race in the Quebec-St Malo. Result: 3rd in class.

1997
• Mini Transat single-handed transatlantic race in 26-foot boats. Result: 17th overall.

1998
• February - Teamed up with Mark Turner at Offshore Challenges.
• November - Route du Rhum solo transatlantic race from St Malo to Guadeloupe on board Open 50ft monohull ‘Kingfisher’. Result: 1st in Open 50 class (20 days, 11 hours, 44 mins, 49 secs).

1999
• January - Won BT/YJA Yachtsman of the Year Award.
• June - Round Europe race on board Open 60ft ‘Aquitaine Innovations’. Co-skipper with Yves Parlier. Result: 1st in Open 60 class.
• August - Fastnet Race on board 60ft trimaran ‘Kingfisher’. Co-skipper with Yvan Bourgnon. Result: 4th in multihull class.
• November - Transat Jaques Vabre two-handed transatlantic race on board 60ft monohull ‘Aquitaine Innovations-Kingfisher’ with co-skipper Yves Parlier from Le Havre to Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. Result: 6th in Open 60 class.

2000
• March-May - Delivery of Open 60 monohull ‘Kingfisher’ from New Zealand, following her launch in January.
• June - Europe1 New Man STAR solo transatlantic race on board ‘Kingfisher’. Result: 1st in Open 60 class (14 days, 23 hours, 11 mins) - youngest person to ever win race.
• November-February 2001 - Vendée Globe solo, non-stop round the world race. Result: 2nd (94 days, 4 hours, 25 mins, 40 secs) - fastest female and youngest sailor to race around the world solo, non-stop.

2001
• May - Challenge Mondial Assistance on board 60ft trimaran ‘Foncia-Kingfisher’ with co-skipper Alain Gautier.
• 3 July-25 August - EDS Atlantic Challenge crewed five leg race from St Malo with stops at Hamburg, Portsmouth, Baltimore, Boston on board ‘Kingfisher’ with co-skipper Nick Moloney. Result: 1st place overall.

Also on 60ft trimaran KINGFISHER-FONCIA during 2001 season:
• 30 April-5 May - Trophee Coralia at Fecamp. Result: 2nd19-24 June - Sardinia Grand Prix.
• 30 Aug-2 September - Fecamp Grand Prix. Result: 1st.
• 11-16 September - Zebrugge Grand Prix. Result: 2nd.
• 4th November - Transat Jacques Vabre two-handed transatlantic race from Le Havre to Salvador de Bahia, Brazil with co-skipper Alain Gautier. Result: 2nd in the ORMA 60 class.

2002
• January - Ellen MacArthur and Kingfisher plc announce five year plan to include Jules Verne record attempt and culminating in the solo Route du Rhum race in November 2006.
• 9-23 November - Route du Rhum solo transatlantic race from St Malo to Guadeloupe on board ‘Kingfisher’. Result: 1st in Open 60 class (13 days, 13 hours, 31 mins, 47 secs) setting a new monohull record.

2003
• January - Jules Verne record attempt on board 110-foot catamaran ‘Kingfisher2’ departing on 30.1.04 with 14 crew to try and break the existing record of 64 days, 8 hours, 37 minutes and 24 seconds. Kingfisher2’s record attempt ended on 23 February when the boat dismasted in the Southern Ocean, 2000 miles from the coast of Australia.
• April - Announced build of new 75-foot trimaran to race in the colours of B&Q and Castorama. The sole objective of the new trimaran is to attempt to break solo speed sailing records.
• November - Transat Jacques Vabre two-handed transatlantic race from Le Havre to Salvador de Bahia, Brazil on board 60-foot multihull ‘Foncia’ with co-skipper Alain Gautier. Result 9th overall (suffered sail/halyard damage on day two of race).

2004
• January - Launch of new 75-foot B&Q trimaran on 8.1.04 in Sydney, Australia.
• March-April - Delivery trip of new trimaran from New Zealand via Australia and the Falklands Islands. Leaving the delivery crew at the Falklands, Ellen sailed B&Q solo to New York.
• June - Solo transatlantic record attempt on board B&Q missing the record by just 75 minutes in a time of 7 days, 3 hours, 49 minutes, 57 seconds.


Accolades

ISAF World Champion election of Woman Sailor of the Year by 113 sailing Federations throughout the world.
Awarded 14.11.01

“The Cup of the Chief of Staff of the French Navy” awarded 30.11.01

FICO World Champion ranked by number of points obtained in the year’s ocean races awarded 7.12.01

BBC Sports Personality of the Year Awards overall runner-up (2nd place to David Beckham) plus ‘Helen Rollason Award’ awarded 9.12.01

‘Sunday Times Woman of the Year’ awarded 11.12.01

MBE awarded 12.12.01 at Buckingham Palace by Queen

Nomination for the title of “Femme en Or” (“Golden Woman”) sport-adventure in France election on 15.12.01


PERSONAL FACTS

Born: 8 July 1976

Age: 28

Lives: grew up Whatstandwell, Derbyshire now lives Cowes, Isle of Wight, UK

Family: parents Ken and Avril MacArthur and two brothers

Ocean miles: estimated to have sailed over 220,000 miles (close to 10 times around the world!)

Charities: Ellen MacArthur Trust, set up to support, empower and enliven young people suffering from cancer or leukaemia by taking them on sailing trips.
 
Re: A Good Start then. For a 28 year old.

We might not know what a good multihull sailor she is compared to other multihull sailors. But then we don't know how they relate to her and each other. Until a group of the rated sailors in this sector decides to do Around Alone type racing in a one design with limited shore support we never will. We have a better idea of her Open 60 type place in the world though.
 
1994
• Debut into full-time yachting, working on an Open 60ft yacht and teaching sailing to adults at the David King Nautical School in Hull.
• Achieved RYA Yachtmaster and Instructor’s ticket, aged 18 (exceptionally young).

1995
• BT/YJA Young Sailor of Year award.
• Sailed ‘Iduna’ single-handed around Great Britain.


Was she not awarded her YM ticket after the UK circumnav? Didn't realize that she also gained YM instructor at the same time.
 
Re: I\'ve just checked with my F1 guru.

Three paddles are now the norm. Two for gear changes, one for launch control.

No race driver would find fully auto acceptable. Traction control is only back as a part of the launch control and there's some dispute regarding it's legality. Though hidden traction control systems have been found or suspected in a number of cars.

Any opinion on best driver/sailor across the generations is just that, an opinion.
 
The voyage of Iduna was an achievement but it was not a circumnavigation of Great Britain. Ellen used the Caledonian Canal and missed out half of Scotland. I have just copied the following from the Caledonian Canal website -

"Once finished, the Caledonian Canal provided the long hoped-for route between eastern and western Scotland. This allowed mariners to avoid the long and often hazardous route round the west of Scotland and through the Pentland Firth. "

Ellen Macarthur has gone on to greater feats of seamanship and I think it's time to stop repeating this inaccurate account of her voyage. She is at the top - she doesn't need to be elevated further.
 
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