But despite being thousands of miles from home, one firm is making sure they will not miss their Christmas dinners.

Fuizion Ltd, run by husband-and-wife duo Alison and Tony Simmonds, has stocked several of the competitors' yachts, including Ecover, Hugo Boss and Artemis, with home-cooked gourmet meals – prepared in a truly bizarre way.

A raft of meals from traditional English stews to tongue-tingling Thai dishes were prepared freshly by 39-year-old chef Tony, then fed into a machine designed for freeze-drying flowers and medical specimens.

The modified contraption takes a week to dry portions of chilli or curry from 400g to 100g of dried dinner, which can be brought back to life by adding water.

And specially for the round-the-world sailors, they have concocted a just-add-water traditional Christmas dinner, complete with turkey, stuffing and potatoes.

'Because you need to stir everything when you add the water, it's made as a kind of stew,' said Alison, 42, who saw her celebrity clients off from France on November 9. 'But because you've got the sage and onion stuffing, and cranberries, it just tastes like Christmas.'

The idea came after an existing client, Chris Sherlock, the skipper of the Leopard vessel, suggested they could do better than the current crop.

She said: 'The majority look like baby food, and doesn't taste as good.

'If you think how much work they have to do on those boats, and the fact they're never really sleeping for more than 20 minutes at a time, they need between 6,000 and 7,000 calories a day.'

The six-year-old, £200,000 catering business, based in St James's Road, Southsea, began freeze-drying food earlier this year, and Alison said the project's potential was clear, with her and Tony planning to expand to a facility in Farlington.

Fuizion Ltd's clients include Hampshire sailing superstars Mike Golding of Ecover, Brian Thompson of Pindar, Alex Thomson of Hugo Boss and Jonny Malbon of Artemis.

Among the firm's most popular dishes are chilli con carne, chicken chasseur, kung po chicken, and beef or lamb stew.

Each sailor has their own personal taste, said Alison Simmonds – Mike Golding enjoys Thai curries, while Alex Thomson does not enjoy spicy food, preferring English stews.

All are now taking on the gruelling single-handed Vendee Globe challenge, which saw them set sail on November 9 from Les Sables-d'Olonne in France. The route will take them south past the Cape of Good Hope, around Antarctica, past Cape Horn and back up the Atlantic.