YOU might think she would be one of the people best able to handle social distancing, since she faces three months alone in the tiny cabin of a racing yacht.

But solo yachtswoman Pip Hare has admitted the start of the coronavirus lockdown was “tougher than expected” and that she “struggled to follow my own advice”.

The Vendee Globe race, which starts this November, will see Pip alone in tiny living quarters on her boat Superbigou for three months, with no more than 10 or 20 minutes of sleep at a time.

“At some point in the Southern Ocean, you are closer to a person on the International Space Station then on a continental land mass,” she has said.

But after telling a national newspaper about her experience of isolation, the yachtswoman wrote a blog post that the coronavirus lockdown had not been easy.

“I’ve spent a huge amount of time with myself in the middle of the ocean. And I like it, I like being alone, self-reliant, purposeful, accomplished,” she wrote on her blog, Pip Hare Ocean Racing.

But she said that “staying home to help stop the spread of corona virus has been tougher than I expected”.

“It has been difficult to stay focussed and I’ve been trying to understand why I have struggled to follow my own advice,” she added.

“It’s not that I don’t have enough to do, believe me there is plenty. It’s more that I am struggling with the enormity of this situation, how things outside my sphere of influence are changing my life on a daily basis.”

She added: “If I reflect on my experience sailing, I realise I do have the tools to deal with these feelings, the issue is I have been focussing my energy in the wrong place. There are times at sea when your options are curtailed, either through adverse weather or damage to the boat. In those circumstances it is crucial to understand what you can control and to reduce your efforts to managing those things only."

She said she had found a “positive way to keep moving forwards”.

“I have found it in the understanding that I need to reduce my field of focus and spend more time on the things I can achieve,” she added.

Pip Hare, who will take part in the Vendee at the age of 46, moved to Poole in 2012 to work at the RNLI.

She has been working alone on her boat, whose refit has been put on pause, making “small steps to make my own environment better”.

“This I can do and this will keep me moving forwards,” she added.