The China Mail - Chocolates for Nemo as Davies prepares for Vendee Globe

The 50-year old Briton is already planning to toss a few chocolates into the ocean and a few drops of alcohol as she passes the almost mythical Point Nemo - the place in the ocean which is farthest from land.

Get to Point Nemo in the South Pacific and you really are in the middle of nowhere - roughly 2,688 kilometres (1,670 miles) away from the nearest land in three directions - often surrounded by mountainous waves that might snap your boat at any moment.

Davies wants to appease Poseidon, or whichever Sea God rules there, the reason going back to 1998 when she was crewing Royal and Sun Alliance for Tracy Edwards.

"It was an attempt on the Jules Verne Trophy with a 100 percent female crew," she told reporters.

"We were brutally dismasted and I still have the GPS point on my mapping software. I'm going back for that, to reconcile myself with the hard blows that I lived through in the South."

This will be Davies' fourth Vendee Globe, her first at the helm of her new IMOCA Initiatives-Coeur, built in 2022, which will allow her to compete with the best in the fleet.

"This hasn't always been the case," she admits. "But at the moment I am often in the lead pack and I have taken a liking to it."

"I am coming into the race much more serene than usual. Before, I was terrified of not finishing. I put crazy pressure on myself and, in the end, I gave up twice.

"You need a mind of steel, a demanding team that has prepared the boat well and a good failsafe because, as usual, the boats will all end up battered."

Davies finished fourth in her first attempt in 2008-09 but four years later lost her mast and had to abandon.

Four years ago it was third time unlucky as she was "sent flying" after hitting an "unidentified floating object" around the Cape of Good Hope.

Again she had to abandon before completing the course out-of-race, her motivation for continuing coming through her desire to give some visibility to her sponsor Initiatives Coeur which works to save children suffering from severe heart defects.

- 'Upward spiral' -

This year, things feel different. Davies now has extensive offshore experience and the steely mind needed for another three months of non-stop sailing around the globe.

And she has the new boat which has competed well since she took charge, finishing third in this year's Transat from Lorient to New York, ahead of both Yannick Bestaven and Charlie Dalin who finished first and second respectively in the last Vendee.

"Touch wood but the reliability tests have gone really well," she said.

"As the races went by, we had fewer problems, we gained confidence and we were able to hit the ground running. It was an upward spiral.

Daughter of a submarine commander and raised in Portsmouth on the English south coast, Davies was brought up with the sea. After graduating from Cambridge with a degree in mechanical engineering she hit the high seas.

In 1998 she helped out Ellen MacArthur, the only woman ever to make the Vendee podium when she came second in 2000-01, bringing her 50-footer home from Guadeloupe after a successful class win.

Davies left British shores many years ago and since 2001 has lived in Brittany with her partner Romain Attanasio and their teenage son.

Attanasio will not be too far away from her during the race - he is also competing and angling both for a top 10 finish and domestic bragging rights.

The Vendee, which begins from Sables-d'Olonne in Brittany on November 10, is often referred to as the "Everest of the Seas" where sailors are mercilessly vulnerable to the elements as they navigate roughly 24,000 nautical miles (44,000km) in a round trip back to Sables-d'Olonne but that has never hindered Davies.

"At no time did I say to myself: 'This is too much'," she said.

"The ocean still makes me dream so much and this race too."

U.Feng--ThChM