ISLE OF WIGHT record-breaking yachts-woman Ellen MacArthur, pictured above, will return to sea alone this weekend for the first time since her Vendee Globe triumph.

Cowes-based MacArthur is one of the favourites to win her class in the Route de Rhum solo transatlantic competition due to start in St Malo, France, on Saturday.

She will race in Kingfisher - the 60ft boat she travelled 25,000 miles around the world in non-stop in 2001.

However, it will be the last time the 26-year-old competes in the beloved vessel she famously kissed at the end of the Vendee. Next year she will sale in a catamaran, Kingfisher II to try and beat the record for sailing non-stop around the world.

MacArthur will tomorrow morning talk about the forthcoming competition at an informal press conference in St Malo.

She is one of the star attractions of the 3,540-mile race, which finishes in Guadeloupe, French West Indies, two weeks from now.

The prize of winning the dash across the Atlantic involving 59 boats is £50,000. The competition takes place every four years. It was first run in 1978.

There are two classes in the race - monohull and multi-hull. MacArthur is competing in the monohull class.

Her biggest rival in the race is Frenchman Roland Jourdain, who MacArthur beat into third place in the Vendee Globe.

Organisers said up to one million people are expected to descend on St Malo to watch the yacht leave. Sailing is a much bigger sport in France than Britain and MacArthur is a heroine to the French who call her La Jeune Espoire de la Voile or Sailing's Young Hope.

She is the fastest woman and youngest person ever to circumnavigate the globe single-handed after her second place in the Vendee Globe.

Other Britons competing are: Southampton-based Vendee Globe veteran Mike Golding, 42, from Southampton, Miranda Merron, 33, from Hamble, and Conrad Humphreys, 29, from Plymouth.