THE homecoming could not have been more romantically timed. Just 41 minutes into Valentine’s Day, after 96 days alone at sea, the round-the-world yachtswoman Samantha Davies sailed across the finishing line of the Vendée Globe early yesterday and into the arms of Romain Attanasio, her French boyfriend.

For once in the 27,470 nautical mile voyage, through some of the most inhospitable waters on the planet, the weather stayed calm for the arrival of the woman nicknamed “la petite anglaise”.

The sky was starlit and the moon bathed the water in a shimmering light as Davies’s parents, Jenny and Paul, her younger sister Debbie and Attanasio, himself a solo sailor, boarded the 60ft Roxy, bringing the 34-year-old English skipper some human warmth for the first time since November 9.

When, nearly two hours after her arrival, the flotilla of boats headed back to port and the family slipped away, Davies and Attanasio were left alone on board for a proper Valentine’s Day reunion. “No one had to say anything, I could see from the look on their faces that they were very proud of me,” Davies told The Sunday Times.

“It’s strange. I’ve felt closer to my family than when I’m on land because we’ve been e-mailing every day. Everything I’ve done has come from my mum and dad. The real basis of my seamanship is down to them.

“Romain’s been great, too. I’ve talked to him every Sunday and if I’m moaning about something I have to remember that he would love to be out here racing as well.”

Davies has sailed serenely through a dramatic race to claim third place on the water, despite having a nine-year-old boat against the strongest fleet in Vendée history.

Her actual finishing time was corrected by the race jury to 95 days, 4 hours, 39 minutes and 1 second. This was to take into account Davies’s 32-hour diversion to help with the rescue of Yann Eliès, the Frenchman who broke a leg in a fall aboard his yacht in the Southern Ocean in December.

If Marc Guillemot, also vying for third but sailing the final miles of the race without a keel, does not cross the line in the early hours of tomorrow morning, Davies will follow Dame Ellen MacArthur onto the podium of a race traditionally reserved for Frenchmen.

“I’ve really surprised myself,” she said. “I’ve never seen anyone have a race like I have. I kept waiting for the moment when I couldn’t stop crying, when I had a really bad day. But nothing stressed me out, which is down a lot to the boat and to the team.”

On the quayside, as the tradition of the race demands, a posse of Vendée skippers, including Mike Golding, who finished third in 2004-5, and Armel Le Cléac’h, placed second, gathered to welcome home a woman who glowed for all the world as if she had just spent a couple of weeks in the Mediterranean. Most emotionally, Eliès, who is still recovering, was there to thank Sam for her part in his rescue.

Davies is resident in Brittany, fluent in French and a graduate of the elite Pôle France squad in Port La Fôret (as well as St John's College, Cambridge). Like MacArthur before her, she has become steeped in the adventuring tradition of French solo sailing.

While the fast pace of the race took its toll, reducing the starting fleet of 30 to 11 survivors, Davies took advantage of the high attrition rate to rise up the rankings.

“The hardest moments on the race were when Yann [Eliès] was injured and another yachtsman, Jean Le Cam, capsized and was trapped under his boat,” she said.

“You knew their lives were in danger, how fragile we are out there and how dangerous this race is. If one thing goes wrong, the race is over. But if you thought too much about it, you’d scare yourself and never go out there.”

Another Briton, Dee Caffari on Aviva, the other female skipper in the fleet, is due to finish the race tonight to become the first woman to sail solo nonstop both ways round the world.

Caffari shot to prominence by circumnavigating the globe east to west, against prevailing winds and tide, but has only recently graduated to the competitive ranks of solo racing. If she overhauls another British skipper, Brian Thompson on Bahrain Team Pindar, to finish fifth, Davies and Caffari will have led home the Brit pack, showing which sex rules Britannia’s waves.

GIRL POWER: THE NEXT GENERATION

Katie Miller, 21
Started sailing on a family holiday in Greece. Now a student, in May she will become the youngest female competitor in the solo transatlantic Ostar race from Plymouth to Rhode Island. She was 2006 young sailor of the year and hopes to race in the Vendée Globe in 2016

Hannah White, 25
Began sailing at Cowes 10 years ago. The youngest skipper in the 2005 transatlantic Ostar, she led her class before being forced to retire. She has worked with Alex Thomson on his Hugo Boss Vendée campaign and has long-term ambitions to do the race herself

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