TRACY EDWARDS is no good at embroidery, making marmalade or, for that matter, hanging on to husbands. Her first marriage lasted three months, her second not quite two years.

`That's it,' she announced with a grin that implied relief, `no more.

Mum's reconciled to never having grandchildren. I'm happier on my own.'

The irony was that at that very moment, she was standing astride a figurative co-respondent, the seducer of her deepest passions. Poor husbands. How do you go about suing a boat and the high seas for the breakdown of a partnership?

Boat? I write of the biggest and fastest wind-propelled craft in the history of maritime sport, a twin-hulled catamaran longer and wider than a tennis court with a mast towering 102ft above its deck. Tracy Edwards - who is 34, stands 5ft 2ins and is second only to Maggie Thatcher as the most determined woman I have ever met - owns it and is shortly to attack the most formidible of all yachting challenges: circumnavigating the world non-stop in less than the existing record of 74 days, 22 hours, 17 minutes and 22 seconds. Don't laugh. Merely to get her hands on the boat required a steely single-mindedness that makes a vast number of British sportswomen look like wilting violets.

Edwards was first and last heard of in the 1989-90 Whitbread Round-the-World yacht race when she raised the money and the first all-female crew to compete in a yacht named Maiden, come second in her class, be voted Yachtsman of the Year, pick up a gong at Buckingham Palace and write a book that has sold more copies than any other in the literature of nautical adventure.

Then she slid off the celebrity circuit and disappeared. In fact, she'd gone to a secluded cottage in Wales with a bad back injury and her second husband to dream up an encore.

Next week, on the Hamble alongside Southampton, her catamaran will be relaunched by a heroic sporting figure whom she specifically asked me not to name, so I will not do so. Alongside Mary Peters and Laura Davies, Tracy Edwards is one of the three British sportswomen I most admire. I'd hate to live with her tunnel vision, but that's another matter.

Never mind the shopping list for Tesco. How do you go about buying a yacht that has a chance of breaking the round-the-world record?

Obviously, you go for a craft that has proved itself already, in this case Ensa, jointly skippered by Sir Robin Knox-Johnston and Sir Peter Blake two years ago, to establish the 74-day record. The only problem was that she was docked in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and priced at Pounds 350,000.

Tracy Edwards bought her just like that. She took out a second mortgage on her home and borrowed the rest from the Royal Bank of Scotland.

`It became really frightening,' she said. `I got a sponsor but at the critical moment they ran into financial problems and nothing came of it. I'd hired staff and contracted a re-fit for the boat that was going to cost a fortune. I alone was entirely responsible. It was a total nightmare and all I could do was sell the boat again to pay off my debts.

`The Royal Bank of Scotland were wonderful. They stuck by me. Then along came Royal Sunalliance, the insurance company, and we were saved.'

Royal Sunalliance paid Pounds 4.27million for the exposure. Yesterday the BBC were fitting cameras to the boat for a post-race documentary.

They have probably got a bargain. Before tackling the world, Tracy Edwards and her all-woman international crew - English, Scottish, Welsh, Swedish, French, Australian and American - will attack two other records.

The first is the west-to-east crossing of the Atlantic in late June which currently stands at six days, 13 hours. The next is the round-Britain mark, currently five days, 21 hours.

Then the world.

Well, Tracy knows all about it. She's been there twice already, first as a cook in the 1985-86 Whitbread, then as a skipper in 1989-90. `Yes,' she admits, `there are moments, particularly in the Southern Ocean, when you are simply terrified. You cling on, fearing death, but it is only afterwards that you start shaking and thanking God that you've come through it.'

Her catamaran attack on the world record will be an entirely new experience. `You have to learn to sail all over again,' she said. `The speed is frightening. Fortunately, Ed Danby, a member of the Knox-Johnston and Blake crew, is around to help me. I've had to start all over again but at least I've got the boat.'

It was Election Day when we chatted and Tracy hadn't voted. She was undecided anyway, regarding politicians who've seen nothing more of the world than the London School of Economics, political research and the Houses of Parliament as a bunch of (adjective and noun deleted) determining how the rest of us should live.

Tracy Edwards, all 5ft 2ins of her, is terminally mad but I adore her to distraction. She doesn't beg for hand-outs or Lottery money but puts her own cash, even when she doesn't have any, on the line.

`What are you going to do,' I asked her, `when your yottie career is over?'

`Simple,' she said. `I've spent all my life zooming past countries at a rate of knots and what I'd like to do is go back to them and visit the beaches and a few local bars.'

Seriously, chaps, you could fall in love with this lady but, on second thoughts, better not to.

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