This morning the headboard car ripped out and off of the mainsail track causing damage that could seriously threaten Ellen MacArthur’s solo round the world record attempt.  The mainsail is attached to the mast via a series of ‘cars’ that slide up and down a metal track fixed to the backside of the mast. The final car at the top of the mainsail is known as the headboard car, this is the one that takes the most load. At the time of the incident at around 0830gmt this morning, Ellen was sailing upwind with two reefs in the mainsail in 20 knots when she noticed that the head of the mainsail flopping around -it soon became evident that the headboard car had detached itself from the mainsail track just above the second reef point.  MacArthur dropped the mainsail to check the headboard car but since then has managed to repair it (by replacing the missing slide rods that act as the bearing for the car to slide up and down the track) and get this car back onto the mainsail track. “I felt like a circus act trying to get this back on, it feels so heavy at the moment, everything does,” commented MacArthur reporting back to OC Mission Control that she had managed to rehoist the mainsail to just under the damaged 2nd reef point. Ellen is likely to wait until the breeze drops further before making the first of what could be several mast climbs to try to repair the damaged areas of track at the 2nd reef point, 1st reef point and possibly at the masthead – as it seems that before the car detached itself completely, it has been working loose and causing damage at each point in the past few days when the sail has been at different heights.  This mast climb will take a few hours in the current conditions – not an easy exercise with the boat moving and lurching beneath you. The initial work will consist of trying to sand and file the profiled track back in to a working shape to allow the cars to slide past as the sail is re-hoisted. The only upside is that wind and sea conditions are set to diminish throughout today – equally meaning that B&Q will be severly underpowered without being able to get the rest of the sail back up.  MacArthur does carry spares to replace part of the mainsail track itself if neccessary, although this is a major and time consuming technically challenging DIY exercise even alongside the dock with a team of people, let alone on your own in the middle of the ocean…

Ellen’s lead on the record is under threat as the slow speeds over the last two days slice in to B&Q’s advantage. This morning, the lead had already slipped to 2 days and 11 hours, compared to 3 days, 21 hours going into day 51. And the latest blow to her record attempt – coming on the back of the Solent tack line failure yesterday – will impact further on her advantage.  In addition, the latest prognosis for reaching the Equator is not looking good at all: “The weather ahead looks terrible, we might lose our lead before the Equator which could be 8 days away. Everything we worked so hard for we are losing…”. This was Ellen’s thoughts before this morning’s major damage. B&Q’s course over the last few days has been weaving north eastwards up the South Atlantic – firstly to negotiate a large area of high pressure, then chasing a front to get to the stronger upwind conditions of last night – and these three weather hurdles have presented one of the toughest meteorological challenges so far on Ellen’s solo round the world record attempt.