Mike Golding - Onwards And Upwards For A Pragmatic Golding

Long-range forecasts suggest that the final chapter of the Vendee Globe will conclude at a rapid pace, which is not a scenario that suits Mike Golding as he attempts to catch up on the two boats ahead.

A few days ago, the forecast had looked confused, now it appears more straightforward. “It’s a shame it’s changed from the way it was, because it was a complete mess, and a complete mess would have offered me opportunity. Having said that, it could change again.”

Indeed, just a few minutes later, as Golding was looking through the latest weather file, things had changed. “As I’m sitting here I’m running the routing, and looking at how things evolve, it’s not as bad as I thought – or rather it’s not as good as I thought – which means it’s good for me. It’s not the Doldrums that’s doing it, it’s the entry into the North Atlantic that could cause the problems. It’s possible that it could stall up the leaders and give me a chance to catch up and after that there’s a medium to strong north-easterly, which is fine by me.”

Another day on from his halyard crisis, and Ecover’s skipper is sounding more and more positive. He doesn’t like to be reminded of what he had just gone through, however, preferring to look forwards. “I am over it, althouth it’s still very disappointing. It’s not a nice time, not something I’m reflecting on. There’s another 12 to 14 days of this race, and I intend to use those as best I can to pull back the deficit.”

Golding is finding it easier to think of the deficit to PRB in terms of time rather than distance. “It’s not been easy for me the past few days, because I’ve definitely been in worse conditions, so I’ve probably done OK to hold my own. Hopefully I’ll start to have more breeze as Vincent gets closer to the Doldrums. I’m currently 18 hours behind Vincent, which seems more manageable. The distance involved is quite large, but the time deficit puts it into perspective. You can start to see that’s not such a huge time.”

Perhaps the Doldrums might do its dastardly work on Golding’s rivals, although he’s not really expecting it. “It would be a mistake if one of these guys ended up wallowing around in the Doldrums. I think they’re a little bit too smart for that. But I’m not quite sure what Vincent’s strategy is, it doesn’t tally with anything I’ve been looking at. He might have different information to me, it’s quite possible. But we’re all working off the same weather model.”

One aspect of the latter stages of the Vendee is just how much lighter the boats become as the skippers work through their food rations and other consumables. “The boats get quicker,” Golding explained. “The boat is as light as it’s been, it’s probably loaded up to the equivalent of half a Transat.”

With such a fast passage around the world, Golding is unlikely to need his full quota of provisions, designed around a 95-day race with five days for unforeseen circumstances and emergencies. “I’ve already got rid of excess food, the packaging I’ve kept. There’s not much wastage, we’re not carrying tonnes of excess of anything. We’re using up things at about the right rate. Food I’ve got a little bit of excess but that’s about it. I’ve kept back an extra box of freeze-dried, that’s all.”

Now that Ecover has moved into single figures of latitude and the equator draws close, he doesn’t feel the need for much eating. “My intake is not incredibly high at the moment. I’m still on three meals a day only because I’ve been getting over the worst of the halyard jobs, but normally it would be 3,500 calories, something like that. In the south I’d be on 5,000 or more.”

While the heat is a welcome respite from the painfully cold temperatures of the deep south, the climate is now going a little too far the other way for the British sailor’s liking. “There’s a spot on the way into the tropics and a spot on the way out which is just perfect. You’d like to sail there for the rest of your life. Unfortunately it’s now gone a little too far, it’s too sweaty and too salty, it’s not all it could be.”

At least the warmer weather has afforded Golding the opportunity of a long overdue shower. “Believe it or not, amid all that cafuffle of the other day, it absolutely lashed down with rain, and I took the opportunity to get some Ecover handwash out during a thunderstorm and get a full douching. I was then immediately soaked with salt water, which is actually quite fortunate because I’d just got soaped up and then the rain turned off. I had to wait for the next wave. So I was still salty at the end of it, but you still feel better for it.”

Hearing news of Nick Moloney’s collision with an unidentified submerged object has reminded Golding of the peculiar hazards of the Atlantic. “If you recall on the way south I hit several things and narrowly avoided hitting several others. There was a lot of junk on the way down the South Atlantic, and I seemed to go through an area that was full of it – probably because I was in the centre of the bloody High! I think everything arrived in the centre of the High. Every time I went on deck there were boxes, an office chair, a filing cabinet, oil drums. You name it, it was out there. And on the return from the Transat we hit two things, knocking the bottom off the rudder. It seems to be happening more and more frequently, which is worrying.”

After an iceberg, perhaps the most hazardous object that could get in the way of an Open 60 is a 40-foot container that’s fallen off a cargo ship. It was in the closing stages of the last Vendee Globe when Ellen MacArthur struck something which she believes was just such a container. Golding is fully aware of the dangers. “There’s lots of those things around, although I’ve never seen one. I’ve seen a pontoon out there, with cleats and everything. I could have moored up in the middle of the South Atlantic.”

Ecover’s skipper has strong views on the problem, understandable when it puts your own life at risk. The nasty thing about containers is that they tend to float just a few inches below the surface, so they are virtually undetectable. “When a container ship gets into a storm, there is an expected loss of containers from the ship, which is dreadful, it creates a real hazard. All one can hope is that when one of these ships hits one of its own containers, it makes a nice big hole in them. If the owners had to pay to repair their own damage… I mean, how hard can it be to stop containers going over the side, it really can’t be that hard? There must be a way to prevent it happening, and yet the owners don’t bother doing anything about it.”