At least four Scottish skippers will be among the biggest ever fleet for the fortieth anniversary single-handed transatlantic race, the Europe 1 New Man STAR, which sets off tomorrow from Plymouth heading for Newport, Rhode Island.

Among this, the most competitive fleet assembled and which includes 19 Open 60 monohulls out to qualify for this winter's Vendee Globe single-handed round the world race, the four Scots will be competing in a range of different craft - from the conventional to the innovative cutting edge - aspiring to fulfil different objectives.

For Emma Richards, 24, this is the next logical step in what is now a flourishing career as a professional ocean racer.

After winning her class along with co-skipper Miranda Merron on last autumn's Jaques Vabre transatlantic race on Pindar, this will be her first big single-handed race.

After an ill-fated attempt at the two-handed AG2R race across the Atlantic in April, when their forestay parted on their 32-foot Figaro and they had to retire, Emma is desperate to get back out on to a transatlantic race course and will be back aboard Pete Goss' Open 50 named Pindar after the multi-national Scarborough based printing and multi-media company which backs her challenges.

It will be her first attempt at racing alone, but this week amid the clamour and glamour of Queen Anne's Battery in Plymouth, where the huge fleet has been assembling, as ever she was remarkably cool. ''Really I know the boat so well, literally every inch of it, and when I did the qualifying passage for this race on my own I found it all relatively straightforward. I had done most of the manoeuvres, sail handling and other things on my own at various stages while racing with Miranda, so it's a bit like just pretending she's asleep and just getting on with it.''

The young Helensburgh skipper, who will race in the eight-boat strong Monohull Class 2, added: ''After the last race I feel I have unfinished business out there and I just want to get on with it.''

Compared with the fully-funded British programmes of Richards, and the likes of Mike Golding's Vendee Globe entered Open 60, Group 4, and the #3m-plus campaign of Ellen Macarthur - who has a new purpose-built Open 60, Kingfisher, which she has just sailed back from the Auckland, New Zealand builders - the other Scots are in keeping with the original Corinthian element of the race which first ran in 1960.

By a twist of fate the Scots have been berthed alongside each other. London-based software consultant Donald McHardy, 39, has a 34-foot Mervyn Owen designed trimaran Fiery Cross. Across from him in the dock have been 54-year-old Stuart Macdonald's Largs-based series production-built Contessa OOD 34 Red Alert and Edinburgh fund manager Jason Baggaley, 31, whose Phil Morrison-designed water ballasted Ana was a round Britain race winner and better known as Modi Khola.

The Scots amateur trio all race in Class 5 which has 14 entries including two brand new Italian wing-masted, custom-built, water-ballasted Whitbread 30 type boats.

Baggaley fell in love with Modi Khola when he raced the 1993 Round Britain on her with Chris Shepherd and won their class, and knew then that he wanted to buy her and compete in bigger races.

The boat is named Ana after a young friend who died of cancer, and in her memory Baggaley has already raised #30,000 of sponsorship, which will be matched by his employer Standard Life's anniversary appeal, to go to Macmillan Nurses and worthwhile Edinburgh-based charities.

He has two transatlantic crossings to his name. He delivered Mary Falk's 35-foot water-ballasted Q11 back with one other person from Rhode Island, after the last race in 1996 when QII had just set the class record of 19 days 22 hours and 57 minutes, and prior to that he crossed east to west in a 34-foot cruising boat.

He has had a great deal of help with the research involved with finding the optimum route for the 2810 to 4200-mile passage.

There are up to five different choices which vary from the great circle route, where the distance sailed is least and which goes north towards Newfoundland where the notorious fog banks are, to the southernmost Azores or trade winds route. With the assistance of Ellen Macarthur's weather and routing strategists he is considering sailing as far north as possible, seeking the advantage of the half a knot of favourable current which flows down the eastern seaboard.

''The only problem here is that I have no radar and no means of communication with the outside world so ice and fog are not a terribly great proposition,'' concludes Baggaley whose 30-footer is the smallest boat in the race and will be eligible for the race's newest prize. The Jester Medal for the smallest non-sponsored boat commemorates race founder Blondie Hasler's 25-foot boat Jester.

By comparison with Ana, which as Modi Kohla was a cutting-edge, long-distance speedster when first launched, Stuart MacDonald's well-prepared OOD 34 is a conventional cruiser racer.

His well-founded yacht won its class in the 1997 Fastnet race and has occupied his weekends since last autumn. In the midst of what has become a vast open-air boatyard this week in Plymouth, his boat Red Alert has been an oasis of calm. The master mariner who runs his own marine consultancy has even allegedly been spotted sunbathing.

''All I am looking to do really is get there and make a competent, respectable job of doing so,'' says MacDonald whose longest voyage under sail this will be.

Donald McHardy arrived in Plymouth for the race start from his base in the Solent. His mood matched his boat name, Fiery Cross.

The rigging company which had just made a new forestay for his 1988 built boat let him down when a few miles out the mast supporting wire parted, and he has since had to find a local rigger in Plymouth to hurriedly fit a new one.

Fiery Cross was built for the 1988 single-handed transatlantic race and this will be her third Atlantic crossing, but McHardy decided to do the race only at the end of last summer when he completed the Azores and Back Race in sixth place.

Follow the race on: www.europe1newmanstar.com.