With 493 miles left to run to Guadeloupe, Ellen is sailing hard to maintain her lead, despite problems with her autopilot forcing her steer by hand for much of last 36 hours.

Ellen MacArthur’s Log – 0700 GMT:

“For the moment, everything is okay. We are sailing under gennaker and full mainsail. We are not as fast as Mike but it’s okay. I’ve got 18-20 knots of wind, quite stable and tonight we’ve got a full moon but we can’t see it very well because there are a lot of clouds.

I think it’s a bit early to give an ETA. Right now I’m pretty stressed trying to stay in front of Mike and I’m not thinking at all about an ETA.

What am I thinking about at the moment? Is the boat OK? Did I sleep well? Eat well? Do we have everything we need to cross the finish line without any problems?… because there is still a long way to go.

I’ve got a little problem onboard. One of my autopilots is not working anymore. I’ve got another one but it’s not so good.

For me the focus is to get to the finish as fast as I can. Whether I finish ahead of Mich is not an issue for me, we’re in different classes and we started at different times. We still have a lot of miles to race, it will be difficult at the end for sure so I just want to focus on that.”

LATEST POSITIONS IMOCA OPEN 60 FLEET:

1. Ellen MacArthur (KINGFISHER) 493.7 miles to finish

2. Mike Golding (ECOVER) 65.7 miles to leader

3. Joe Seeten (ARCELOR-DUNKERQUE) 587.3 miles to leader

4. Roland Jourdain (SILL) 674.8 miles to leader