She wanted it to stop but the police seemed powerless against the man who stalked her. The woman, a client of Dr Paul Mullen - a British forensic psychiatrist at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and a world authority on stalking behaviour - was very strong mentally. They're certainly not mad."He added: "They're extremely keen yachtsmen who are very self-reliant, and wish to prove their abilities, which are considerable People who are mad in yachts jump overboard or drown.". For six months she tolerated his presence in her life, at first more irritated than anxious as he began following her home from work, and standing close up behind her on the station platform and in the train Then he took to standing outside her house all night. I just sat there and watched it ..."I am not going to go round the world again.

I think three times is enough and you start to get giddy if you go round more than three times."However, the courageous folly of Britain's solo voyagers was defended yesterday by John Reed, secretary of the World Sailing Speed Record Council, the official body set up to monitor the challenges to existing records for completing voyages.Mr Reed said: "People have started to look at it as a challenge to break time records, which is becoming more and more difficult as they get faster and faster It's a natural part of human endeavour. He went off-air, and friends feared he had been lost at sea.Despite being knocked unconscious, and running short of food and water he survived aboard his 34-ft sloop, Solitaire. He rationed himself to a quarter of a tin of corned beef and two spoonfuls of rice a day and finally sailed into Lymington in Hampshire at the weekend.Mr Powles said: "There was water coming in the boat all the time, but I could not move for 24 hours. "It was more of an odyssey and I could never have carried on For me, the sea is incredibly boring after a while It just goes on and on. It was a spiritual thing, but it was a very short period of my life."The tradition of lone voyages has become so established among British sailors that round-the-world trips are relatively commonplace.Only the speed in which they are completed, or the handicaps that are overcome, make them extraordinary.Leslie Powles, 70, dubbed the Ancient Mariner, returned from his third round-the-world voyage on Sunday The four-month trip nearly cost him his life. He has described how he often forgets to take the right equipment on treks and tends to improvise as he goes along, making things fit his needs along the way.Ms Francis, now better known as a best-selling crime writer, is reluctant to remember her sailing days. She believes that there is a degree of madness involved in taken on the seas alone."It wasn't a sporting thing for me," she said.

The most surprising thing with Chay Blyth was his lack of organisation and impulsiveness." He added: "There was this sense of 'just get the money together, go off and have a go', which, by any rational standards, is an unusually impulsive way of going about things. That is certainly what separates these explorers from other people."This impulsiveness is shared by other modern-day adventurers, including the explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes. That was very special."According to psychologists, her personality fits exactly the profile of the peculiarly British breed of solo sailors. Ms Brewster, a farmer's daughter, is fiercely self-reliant, and, on her own admission, is intolerant of other people's weaknesses.Dr George Sik, a psychologist who has worked with yacht crews, said: "Compared to other people, they can be intensely assertive and impulsive, certainly eccentric, though not entirely barking mad. In 1973, Clare Francis made a single- handed transatlantic crossing; and Mike Golding set the record last year as the fastest man to sail the wrong way round the world in just 161 days.Ms Brewster said: "When I felt like giving up, it was my family and friends who saw me through.