Dame Ellen MacArthur said last night that she expects a week to be taken off her solo round-the-world record of 71 days 14 hours by one of the two French sailors taking it on this winter.

MacArthur, 31, does not know how she would feel about someone beating her achievement, but she sounds more and more like someone eyeing another grand campaign after 2010, when her company’s new multimillion-pound sponsorship deal with BT expires. Talk of her retirement and conversion to being a businesswoman or eco-warrior has been greatly exaggerated. “I’m a sailor first,” she said.

Francis Joyon, the 51-year-old Breton, set sail from Brest on Friday morning and is attempting to regain the record that MacArthur took from him in February 2005. Joyon is the big beast of solo sailing and in his 97-foot trimaran IDEC II - 20 feet longer than MacArthur’s B&Q – he should take the record.

If Joyon does not, then Thomas Colville, who was going to leave on the same day from Les Sables D’Ollones, but postponed briefly, may. His boat, Sodebo, is 15 feet longer than MacArthur’s. All other things being equal, length means greater speed in the water.

The symbolic mark for the record is 70 days, which a few years ago even fully crewed boats, which now push 50 days for the journey, would have baulked at. Joyon would need to finish by February 1 to break that.

“I don’t know how I will feel about that,” MacArthur said. “I just can’t say until it happens. But I expect one of them to break it. They are bigger boats and both well-prepared. It does make me remember how hard it was, but that doesn’t make me not want to do it. In the end, I’m a sailor and still a very competitive person.”

Such is the camaraderie in the world of sailing that MacArthur launched Colville’s boat three months ago and has shared much experience and boat technology with her two rivals. The memories that are pulling her to the ocean came flooding back in Sables d’Olonne, where she arrived back from the Vendée Globe in 2001. “There were so many memories there, we even stayed in the same flat and the boat was cool,” MacArthur said.

Mark Turner, Ellen’s long-time friend and business partner, could not hide a glint of competitive spirit. “It’s the hardest thing we’ve done [the solo record] so it is not something we would rush to do again,” Turner said. “But the thing that has always driven us is sailing challenges and it’s our most cherished achievement.

“It’s very interesting hearing Ellen answer when asked if she would do it again. Our record will go. There are lots of things that can go wrong on these attempts, but both boats were designed by the same team that designed our boats and are two evolutions on.”

Turner, the visionary behind the Barcelona World Race, the first two-handed round-the-world race that began a fortnight ago, has his hands full at the moment, but will be right behind a MacArthur campaign.

It was Joyon who made the last great leap forward in 2004, setting the record that MacArthur broke a year later. Joyon smashed the previous record for a solo circumnavigation by 20 days with 72 days and 22 hours in a boat not designed for solo sailing and with ten-year-old sails. In something more custom-built, Joyon showed his speed on July 3, 2005, breaking the 24-hour solo speed record with 543 nautical miles in 24 hours. But he lost his £3 million IDEC when she struck rocks off Brittany four days later.

MacArthur was in Barcelona before the start of the Barcelona World Race and her appetite for returning to racing was obvious. She no longer sounded tired and jaded as she had last January. “I made a call and I’m not unhappy about that,” she said. “All the options are open, I’m 31, it’s not as if I’m 40 and thinking, ‘Oh crikey, if I don’t do the next Vendée, that’s it for me’. People are suggesting I’m a businesswoman, but I’m really not, I’m a sailor first. Mentally, I’ve never been away.”