Not for the first time, the locals of Les Sables d’Olonne have taken a young British hero to their hearts. Eight years ago, Ellen MacArthur sailed into French folklore by finishing second on the Vendee Globe, the solo nonstop round the world race.

Yesterday, in the early hours of a still morning, another slip of a lass gloriously honoured the tradition by sailing her ten-year-old Roxy into third place in a race that has surpassed its daunting reputation for drama and danger.

Sam Davies left this small fishing port on November 9 as a curiosity, one of two female skippers in the race, both British. Yesterday, after a corrected time of 95 days, four hours, 39 minutes and one second, she returned as a phenomenon, a celebrity, feted not just for her seamanship and bravery but for the overwhelming humour and enjoyment with which she has faced the challenges of the 27,400-mile journey.

“It sounds strange, but it was easy,” she said. “It felt as if I had done something normal. I’d just been sailing my boat, but when I saw all the people, I thought, ‘Yes, I really did it’. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.” Asked if she ever had a day when she wanted to give up, she replied: “No.” Nor, she added in French, was she prone to cry. She was certainly not going to follow MacArthur’s lead and kiss her boat.

While many of the skippers wrote in their daily e-mails of the frustrations and the fears of life at sea, the 34-year-old Cambridge graduate has written about sunsets, red socks and lucky ducks. She will tell you how many reefs she has in her mainsail, but only after extolling the virtues of her “holiday heaven”. Her real idea of drama was when the handle fell off her favourite teacup.

“The one thing that really upsets her is if she’s stuck in no wind and everyone else starts to overtake her,” says Paul Davies, Sam’s father. “But when she’s achieving her dream as she is now, she is seriously happy.”

Despite her third place finish, Davies must endure a tense wait to learn if she has earned her place on the podium alongside the winner, Michel Desjoyeaux, her long-time mentor, and Armel Le Cleac’h. Marc Guillemot could yet claim third on corrected time after being given 80 hours redress by the race judges for his part in the rescue of Yann Elies, 48 hours more than Davies. The Frenchman, who is limping home after losing his keel last week, has to finish by the early hours of tomorrow to overtake the British skipper.

Among the first to welcome Davies back yesterday were her parents, Jenny and Paul, who five years ago swapped their house in Hayling Island for the life of “sea gypsies”, as Sam calls them. Their home, a 65-foot wooden replica of the racing yacht, Nina, is moored on the pontoon reserved for the returning Vendee Globe boats. Only 11 have survived out of 30, so there is plenty of room.

Much to their embarrassment, Mr and Mrs Davies have become local celebrities in their own right. But as one is the daughter of a shipbuilder and the other the son of a submarine captain, they will readily shoulder responsibility for their eldest daughter’s passion for the sea. As Sam’s younger sister, Debbie, was an international synchronised swimmer, a sport that Sam tried as well, a competitive gene clearly runs in the family. “Sam was quite reserved as a child, but she knew what she wanted to do,” recalled Jenny. “She was happy in her own company, always very self-assured.” Davies’s initial attempt to sail round the world, a record attempt with Tracy Edwards on Maiden 2, ended in a dismasting in the Southern Ocean. One of the aims of her first Vendee Globe was to pass that point on the map; another was to develop her tactical skills as a solo sailor. “I’ve analysed the race very closely and she has improved hugely throughout,” says Paul Davies. “When she went to help Yann (Elies, the skipper who broke a leg in a fall in the Southern Ocean), she went really fast. Desjoyeaux was averaging 19 and a half knots over three-day periods, Sam was, at times, doing 17 and a half in an old boat.”

Davies’s success has been a testament to her solid preparation, a simple matter of putting miles on the clock. Like MacArthur with Kingfisher, Davies has developed an almost spiritual bond with Roxy, a boat that has already won two Vendees, for Desjoyeaux and Vincent Riou. But the word was out well before the start of the race that, in Davies, England had found not just a natural heir to Dame Ellen but a woman with the talent and tenacity to win the Vendee.

“She’s done all the right things in the background to the race,” said Mike Golding, whose Ecover was dismasted in the Southern Ocean just hours after he’d taken the lead in the race. “She’s been on this mission much longer than people realise. She’s very, very determined and she’s sailed a beautiful race. The French talk a lot about the beauty of this race and Sam understands that. She’s got a great attitude. She certainly has the potential to win it.” Davies stepped on to dry land just after 9am in Les Sables yesterday and was pitched into a frantic round of interviews, which she handled with grace and charm. She promises to be as adept off the water as she has proved to be on it. But this is just the start of her journey into the Vendee record books.

Davies has never made any secret of the fact that her first Vendee was merely a preparation for the ultimate challenge of becoming the first non-French skipper to win the race. The planning has already begun. “But, who knows, I might end up finishing in the same place at the end of it all,” she said recently.

Of the seven British skippers who began the race, four have survived. Dee Caffari, in Aviva, is due in to port tomorrow ahead of Brian Thompson. Steve White, the Dorset vintage car salesman who has kept alive the privateering traditions of the race, is currently 2,000 miles away from completing perhaps the most remarkable global voyage of them all. Until the Toe in the Water charity stepped in to help at the very last moment, White did not know if he had enough money to make the start line, let alone the finish.

Women at helm of GB armada

ELLEN MACARTHUR
Age 32
The grand Dame of solo sailors, MacArthur finished second in the 2000-01 Vendee and set a world record for a single-handed, nonstop, monohull circumnavigation by a woman, opening up a whole new world for female solo skippers. In 2005, she broke the solo circumnavigation record with a voyage of 71 days, 14 hours, 18 mins and 33 seconds. Shortly afterwards, it was announced that she would be named a Dame. She went on to set up the Ellen MacArthur Trust, a charity helping children with serious illnesses. She also runs her own BT-sponsored racing team

DEE CAFFARI
Age 36
The former PE teacher from Watford and granddaughter of a Maltese sea captain first sailed round the world as a skipper on the Global Challenge in 2000. She then successfully completed the Aviva Challenge, becoming the first woman to sail east-to-west round the world. The journey took 178 days. She is due to complete her first Vendee Globe today after 97 days

SAM DAVIES
Age 34
A Cambridge engineering graduate who began her sporting career as a synchronised swimmer and rowed at university, she was taught to sail by her parents on Hayling Island and graduated to solo racing through the French sailing school in Port La Foret. A member of Tracy Edwards’ crew on board Maiden 2 whose round the world record attempt ended unsuccessfully, Davies finished third on the water in her first Vendee and won the unofficial award for skipper with the most e-mail messages

EMMA RICHARDS
AGE 31
Member of the same crew as Davies on Maiden 2, she went on to complete the Around Alone stopping round the world race in 2002-03, the first woman to do so. She was also the youngest yachtswoman to finish the race. Richards began sailing with her parents in Scotland and was racing dinghies internationally at the age of 11. She is married to Mike Sanderson, head of Team Origin, GB’s America’s Cup syndicate and Volvo winner