Thousands of spectators were present to witness Ellen MacArthur’s Kingfisher cross the finish line in Guadeloupe at 0216 GMT this morning.

In taking her win, Ellen has also smashed the monohull record for the event, moving the benchmark from Yves Parlier’s 15d 19h 23m achievement onboard to a new time of 13d 13h 31m 47s. That equates to an average speed of 12.19 knots for Kingfisher’s total sailed distance of 3,968 miles.

Ellen, 26, has also made history by being the first female skipper and the first British entrant to win the monohull class of the Route du Rhum.

Sylvie Viant, president of the RdR race committee said earlier today, “Ellen MacArthur is the greatest female solo sailor in all time. She is brilliant in all categories, she speaks perfect French, she is natural, charming, intelligent, always eager to learn more, and never one hundred percent satisfied. She wants to learn more and more, through herself and from other experienced people, like Alain Gautier and Yves Parlier.”

Ellen said, “I have had so much pleasure actually just being on the boat. “For me it’s been a very special race. Very, very hard tactically without respite. You have to be at your best all the time.

“I had a bit of a fight on with Mike (Golding). One day I was mild, next day he was mild. It will be great to talk to him – to find out how hard he was pushing as I know I was pushing as hard as I could. We suffered the storm but we were further West and got ahead of it. I thought about the multihulls who were hit by it a lot. I’ve never seen a storm like it in all my life with enormous waves”.

At the time of writing this report Mike Golding’s Ecover had just crossed the finish line to make it a British one-two with the next nearest monohull, Joé Seten’s Arcelor-Dunkerque, over 500 miles away.