KINGFISHER2’s international team is drawn from six nations and boasts 20 circumnavigations between them. Speaking about her new team on the stand of press conference hosts Bénéteau yacht builders, Ellen said : "We have assembled a fantastic group of people with a very wide knowledge base. It’s going to be very exciting and a learning experience for myself to sail with these guys, and I think a lot of fun as well !"

The confirmed KINGFISHER2 team are :

– Ellen MacArthur - United Kingdom
– Neal MacDonald - United Kingdom
– Nick Moloney -Australia 
– Benoit Briand -France
– Bruno Dubois - Canada
– Anthony Merringto - Australia
– Andrew Henderson - Australia
– Damian Foxall - Ireland
– Andrew Preece - United Kingdom
– Ronan Le Goff - France
– Hervé Jan - France
– Jason Carrington -United Kingdom
– Nigel King - United Kingdom
– Guillermo Aitadill - Spain

More detailed crew biographies are available at http://www.teamkingfisher.com and from the Kingfisher Challenges media team, details below.

This will not be Ellen‚s first crewed race. In 2002 Ellen was part of two winning teams ˆ firstly with Alain Gautier in the Challenge Mondial race, and then again with victory on KINGFISHER the monohull in the EDS Atlantic Challenge.

LORIENT TO BE WORKUP BASE

KINGFISHER2 was due to be based at the Galician port of Sanxenxo, North West Spain, for crew training and the workup, but due to the recent sinking of the oil tanker Prestige, this plan had to be cancelled. "It is with great regret that we can no longer go to what was an ideal training base in Sanxenxo," commented Project Director Mark Turner. "The town had offered fantastic support, the location further south and open to the Atlantic Ocean was ideal [it was the base for illbruck‚s winning Volvo Ocean Race campaign], and the King of Spain was even hoping to join us for an outing ! I am certain we will return there in the future, and our thoughts are with the local population whose livelihoods have been devastated by this terrible disaster."

An excellent replacement has been found though. The French maritime town of Lorient on the Biscay coast will be the team base for the work-up period, utilising the facilities of Le Defi French America‚s Cup base. Ellen is excited to be returning to Brittany..."Brittany is where these five years of adventure really began for me with the Mini-Transat base in La Trinite. With Alain Gautier and the Foncia team I have also discovered Lorient, and with the great support of the town and base, we’re really looking forward to four to six weeks of training from there."

The project will move to a port closer to the Jules Verne start line [set between the lighhouses at Lizard Point in south-west England and Ushant on the north west tip of France] in mid to late January 2003 [when ready] and await the green light from the weather routers.

"Without doubt the Jules Verne record is hard to beat ˆ the combination of constantly having to find the right weather systems to keep moving at maximum
speed but avoiding the big stuff that could damage the boat is a hard call. These catamarans are speed machines, the loads are enormous and breakages can happen easily."

KINGFISHER2 is currently in Cherbourg, France, having her new 39-metre carbon fibre mast - built by JMV Industries - fitted. The crew hope to set off on the shakedown sail to Lorient towards the end of next week.

THE TOUGHEST RECORD TO BREAK ?

KINGFISHER2 already has a record-breaking history. As Orange, she set the current Jules Verne record of 64 days, eight hours and 37 minutes in May 2002. This is the record Team Kingfisher hope to beat...

Frenchman Bruno Peyron, the first skipper to break the 80-day barrier back in 1993, set the current record with an average speed of 18.15 knots over the distance he sailed. His crew included four of the team that will
sail on Kingfisher2.

This beat Frenchman Olivier de Kersauson’s 1997 record by 7 days, 5 hours, 44 minutes and 44 seconds. Breton de Kersausan is also expected to mount a new Jules Verne challenge this winter on his 38-metre trimaran Geronimo.

Ellen’s new challenge is now to race against the clock and shave as many days, hours, minutes and seconds as possible off the new record set by the same boat less than a year ago. But statistically even to finish the tough Jules Verne course is difficult ˆ even more so at the pace now required to beat the record.

"It’s great to have another project back-to-back with the Route du Rhum to move the story on," continued Ellen. "It has been personally very difficult to leave KINGFISHER the monohull, very hard mentally to move away from that era and it would of been harder if there was nothing there - if I had got off KINGFISHER at the end of the Route du Rhum and that was the end. This is a great new focus to have. I can’t wait to get out there, and I can‚t think of a better bunch of guys to do it with."

Information Kingfisher Challenges