Ellen MacArthur starts her journey.

From Ellen 0800gmt:
"Basically, decided not to push too hard and to be conservative ...sailing with one reef and the genoa at the moment. Got a lot of sleep [ie 2.5 hours!!], don't feel great right now, but on the whole it was necessary so that's been quite cool. Had a bit of a drama yesterday evening just before midnight the main rudder cassette kicked up and broke two of the fuses. I heard a noise, I couldn't work out what it was, went all over the boat couldn't see anything and this was about 2 hours previous and then there was another noise and that's when I saw the box had kicked up. But what I think may have actually happened was that maybe in the rough stuff at the begining, the rudder had been hit hard enough to loosen it and actually stretched the fuses a little bit and then just as we were sailing along the stretched fuses, one bust then the other one bust. I couldn't see any marks on the rudder and I replaced them - pain in the arse job!

On latitude of Finisterre and sailing into this depression now bit windier - all on - sea getting bigger now back into strong wind. The breeze didn't go as light as we thought it would, average speed went down overnight quite a lot - 2 hrs at 17 knots, couple at 15 knots, bit rubbish - but now we appear to be off again.

Went through ridge of the high last night. Made a conscious decision not to put the gennaker up probably would have had it up for about six hours so decided not to go without it. You know in retrospect I could have managed but with 20 knots, gusting 23 knots and averaging 17 knots speed over ground its okay. I am in a different mindset...

Expecting wind to increase quite rapidly today and tonight"

Go Ellen go!!!