Mike Golding and Javier Sanso hold a steady second place in the Transat Jacques Vabre as the fleet moved south of the Azores in and in to what promises to be some faster spells of sailing in the sunshine and favourable breezes which should speed them quicker towards Costa Rica.

Golding admitted today that the conditions he and his Spanish co-skipper have been through the past 48 hours were worse than they expected, but that they had been well prepared and were pleased to be still racing in a strong position. They may have lost very slightly in what Golding considered a small advantage in positioning to the south of leader Safran but the British skipper said today their primary goal is simply to keep their Open 60 Mike Golding Yacht Racing at as close to 100% of speed potential as they can.

" We are just dealing with some quite shifty winds and a complete lack of instruments so it is quite tricky to know what we are dealing with.
Obviously we are very pleased to be out of the bad weather and very pleased to hear that the team on BT are OK. It has obviously been a very bad gale by any standards and so we feel pretty lucky to have got away with a few broken bits of electronics, the boat’s fine the sails are fine. Obviously we had plenty of advance notice and so the boat was prepared for the worst, but it was pretty damaging conditions and I think it was a bit of a surprise because it was even worse than we saw on the forecast files. We were expecting 40-45 knots not 65…and periods of a full 50.
Javier is a very experienced sailor and it has not taken him long to settle in to a rhythm and it is working well, and where we are in the fleet says it is working really well. He is a pretty easy going guy and has a lot of experience with my previous boat Ecover 2. There is a great deal in common between the two boats and so it is quite natural for him to step on board and operate at 100% straight away. He is a tough cookie, no question about it and a good man to have alongside you in a storm, that is for sure.
Positioned to the left of Safran and we were pretty happy being south of him, but we seemed to have lost our south advantage, or a lot of it which is slightly disappointing, maybe it is less important now. But as the breeze rotates and we get lifted there might be some advantages to being where we are, but at the moment we are in slightly softer pressure, maybe a couple of knots.
So I am pretty happy with our position, but there is a long way to go and plenty of sections of the course where things can happen, and I know that Safran is equally quick and so is Groupe Bel.
We will be trying not to get bogged down in that and just concentrate on keeping the boat going at 100% and concentrate on seeing what we can do later on in the week.
Alex, I looked a few days ago at his routing, and he actually came out on top. But a lot of things have to work out exactly right for that plan to work, so it is still an unknown and we will have to wait and see. "