Mike Golding - The Vendee Globe Is A Hard Race

Mike Golding is maintaining a very even distance of 230 miles to the leader directly in front, Vincent Riou. At least the gap isn’t getting bigger, and indeed Ecover even pulled back three miles on PRB on the 10am sked this morning. “On the last sked I just got the best 24 hour run, which is encouraging, but it’s not enough, if you know what I mean,” said Golding.

What he needs is for the weather to shake things up and cause a few surprises. That is unlikely to happen this side of the Doldrums, however. “We’re in trade wind conditions. There are just small differences in pressure, that’s all. That’s the pattern for the foreseeable. Right now I can’t see anything that’s going to cause any big changes, certainly not for the next two days.”

Normally the Doldrums can be relied upon to reshuffle the cards, but even they look reasonably straightforward on the forecast. “I’ve been looking at the Doldrums and it looks like there is a route through. I don’t see any big hold-ups for Vincent, but we’re going to have to hope for better things.”

Normally, sailors would wish for the clearest run through this difficult patch of equatorial Atlantic Ocean, but for Golding a ‘parking lot’ scenario would suit him just fine right now. “I’m not sure about the Doldrums. The forecast is for a gap to open up. Vincent seems intent on heading further west than I would have predicted. I think he will get lifted earlier and so take his choice as to where he crosses. I think being west is good, not so much from the point of view of the Doldrums themselves, but on where you exit. The wind looks much lighter in the east on the other side. But it doesn’t look like there’s a way through to the west of Vincent. The gap will open up somewhere between me and Bonduelle.”

There is good deal of east-west separation between second-placed Bonduelle and Ecover, but Golding expects the front three will all converge on the same gap in the Doldrums. It could be a fast run through. “I have gone through the Doldrums at 22 knots before now, going south. But the Doldrums are nothing if not unpredictable, and at the moment the predictions we’re making on the Doldrums are being made using the AVN or the GFS model, which is not terribly reliable when it comes to the Doldrums. They’re not easy to forecast. It’s only when we get closer that I can start looking at the real conditions rather than forecast conditions, and then we can take a better view on whether or not the routing is correct.”

With the Open 60 charging along in classic trade wind conditions, Golding has finally had a chance to get some rest and to put the hardships of the last few days into perspective. “I’ve just had a broken halyard, that’s all. The race is always hard. It was hard last time, it’s hard this time. You look round the fleet and other people’s stories are hard. It’s just a hard event.”

With over 4000 miles still to go to the finish, the distance to the leaders is not insurmountable, but Golding is under no illusion about the enormity of the task. “It’s 230 miles not just to any old boat. It’s 230 miles to two of the best, most elite singlehanded sailors going. Two highly successful Figaro sailors, two people born and bred to bloody sail these boats. So it’s 230 miles, but 230 miles against some pretty stiff competition.

“Then again, there’s all sorts of things that can happen. The boats are getting tired, so it’s not over. It’s just that I had it in the palm of my hand, and then it’s gone. That’s the frustration – not that it’s over yet, because it’s not – but that I had it there. I was perfectly placed and had this not happened I feel I would be perfectly placed now. I was making good calls, I was on fire. But there you go.”

While Golding’s mood cannot yet be described as optimistic, he is sounding a lot more upbeat than he was two days ago. A lot of that has to do with the fact that he has managed to get some proper sleep, a commodity he had been dangerously lacking in recent days. “I’ve been very, very tired - beyond tired. I’ve been sleeping a lot [over the past day] because the conditions have allowed that. You can get used to it [sleep deprivation], you can get into the rhythm of it. But with the halyard going when I was already tired, and having 48 hours with virtually no sleep, hardly anything to eat, and lots of physical work…that destroyed me, really.”

On a brighter note Golding spoke on his Iridium phone with his 21 month old son, Soren last night. Soren, normally a good listener on the phone but a little reticient to chat, sang him a song and Golding was able to tell his son that Daddy would be home soon. Undoubtedly the propsects of being re-united with his family would have raised Golding`s spirits no end.