Sunday sees the start of The Artemis Transat, the latest incarnation of a race that has started from Plymouth every four years since 1960.

The past two 2,700-mile races to Boston have been won by Brits – Ellen MacArthur aboard Kingfisher in 2000 and Warsash's Mike Golding on Ecover four years later.

But for this race an initially sizeable British entry in the Open 60 class has dwindled in the past couple of weeks.

Golding pulled out with keel problems and the Cowes-based duo of Brian Thompson (Pindar) and Jonny Malbon (Artemis, rather embarrassingly for the race sponsors) have not been able to work their brand new boats up sufficiently to risk them in the potentially stormy waters of the North Atlantic.

So Britain's hopes of a third successive victory rest on the shoulders of Hayling Island's Sam Davies on Roxy and Gosport's Dee Caffari, racing Aviva.

Hamble's Miranda Merron, meanwhile, will be flying the flag for Britain in the junior but highly competitive Open 40 class along with Hampshire's Simon Clarke (Offshore Racing) and Devon's Alex Bennett (Fujifilm).

One indication of the Gallic challenge facing the Brits came at the weather briefings earlier this week.

Davies, 33, a former Portsmouth Grammar School pupil who now lives in France, went to the first briefing, which was in French.

'When Dee, Alex and Simon arrived for the second one in English the room just emptied out,' she told The News.

'The French used to see this as their own, but it's a British race and I'm really proud to fly the flag.'

Davies and Caffari go into the race with radically different advantages, and handicaps.

'I had lunch with Dee yesterday and we were both saying we were envious of each other – me because she has got a brand new boat, her because mine is tried and tested and sorted,' said Davies.

'It's a two-edged sword.'

In contrast to Caffari's state of the art latest generation Aviva, Davies' Roxy was launched back in 2000 and is carrying the extra weight of being an older boat.

But the Groupe Finot design has two Vendee Globe wins in her wake, and while frantic preparations were going on around her on the Plymouth dockside, Davies sounded relaxed.

'It's really hard to tell how I am going to do, I honestly have no idea. Roxy wasn't the fastest upwind boat even of her generation, and it is going to be hard against the newer generation of yachts.

'But that said, if it becomes a race of attrition I could be in with a chance. I don't wish problems on anyone, though.'

A winter refit has improved Roxy's performance and testing off Brittany allowed Davies to train against two former Roxy skippers – legendary French sailors and Vendee winners Michel Desjoyeaux and Vincent Riou.