Francis Joyon is on course to smash Dame Ellen MacArthur’s single-handed round-the-world record. After only five days at sea he is more than a day, or more than 600 miles, ahead of where MacArthur was in 2004. In his simple but powerful 97ft-long IDEC II, which is 22ft longer than MacArthur’s B&Q, Joyon has been powering south from Brest at 500 miles a day.

MacArthur told The Times on Sunday that she expected her record of 71 days, 14 hours to be beaten, with two campaigns planning to go faster. Thomas Coville temporarily delayed his departure with Joyon from Brest on Friday.

Joyon, the 51-year-old Breton whose 2004 record MacArthur took, has not disappointed. It was over this part of the race that MacArthur excelled and she was five days ahead of Joyon’s record six weeks in, before stalling and only just beating it.

But MacArthur was averaging just over 19 knots as she passed the Canaries. Joyon is averaging about 25. He crossed back east of MacArthur’s path and passed through the Santa Luzia Channel, the narrowest point of the Cape Verde archipelago, off Senegal, on his way down the coast of West Africa.

However, Joyon has a lot of ocean to cover, with 19,000 miles to go. “Anything can happen,” MacArthur said. “Everyone thought I would break the record easily because they saw I was five days ahead of Joyon in my record, but then I had no lead by the time I got to Brazil.

“But by starting this early – I think I started almost at the same time of year for mine – if something goes wrong he can go back and start again in the right conditions.”

In Brazil, Mike Golding was preparing to race a battered Ecover 3 across the Atlantic from Salvador de Bahia to Le Havre. Golding finished fifth with Bruno Dubois in a highly competitive Transat Jacques Vabre Race yesterday week, with numerous small problems. Ecover 3, Golding’s new Open 60, has been patched up for the traditional single-handed “BtoB” race back, which qualifies the sailors for the Vendée Globe round-the-world race next year.

Golding is still frustrated by the Transat finish after leading for five days and then getting stuck in the Doldrums. “Immediately we hit the dock in Salvador we faced a barrage of questions from the various media forcing us to reflect further on our errors in the Doldrums and what might have been,” Golding said. “Much of this is interesting but pointless, naturally we know we screwed up. For me the main point is that we took a highly complex race yacht, having sailed her only six times before. We won the start, we led the mid third of the race and then we messed up on our Doldrums. However, the boat has shown potential and speed against the other new designs.”

Ahead of Joyon, racing down the coast of Brazil, the leaders of the Barcelona World Race, the only two-handed round-the-world race, were covering each other. PRB and Paprec-Virbac IIhave been a few miles apart from the start. But after frustration on the previous day the boats behind have made up ground in the trade winds. Alex Thomson and Andrew Cape on Hugo Boss were 221 miles behind in fifth yesterday evening, but had clawed back 60 miles in 24 hours as they passed into the southern hemisphere.

“It has been a really frustrating race up to now, as we have had to contend with weather that is more suited to sunbathing than ocean racing,” Thomson said. “We have now dialled into the southeasterly trade winds and are looking forward to a fast descent to the Southern Ocean.”

After winning their court case against Alinghi in the America’s Cup dispute on Tuesday, BMW Oracle said yesterday that their preference remains an America’s Cup in Valencia in 2009 with multiple challengers.