Despite sailing ‘by the seat of their pants’, racing with no wind instruments and therefore a very compromised automatic pilot system, Mike Golding and his Spanish co-skipper Javier ‘Bubi’ Sanso pass into the second week of the Transat Jacques Vabre in a very strong second place among the 11 remaining IMOCA Open 60’s who now, on Sunday afternoon, have less than 3,000 miles to sail of the 4730 miles course from Le Havre to Porto Limon, Costa Rica.
Mark Lloyd / Lloyd Images
The duo brought their Open 60 Mike Golding through 36 hours of horrendous conditions between Thursday and Friday, winds of over 60 knots and huge seas, to emerge firmly in the leading trio of yachts.
Marc Guillemot and Charles Caudrelier lead by just less than 60 miles on Safran from Golding and Sanso, who have Groupe Bel in hot pursuit, somewhere around 8-11 miles behind.
For Sanso, a vastly experienced skipper in his own right, who sailed Mike’s previous Open 60 to fourth place in the inaugural Barcelona World Race, it has been something of a baptism of fire on the more powerful Mike Golding Yacht Racing, particularly since the duo had only really completed a straightforward qualifying sail of a few days duration, before they left Le Havre last Sunday.
But Golding paid a glowing tribute to his co-skipper yesterday:
“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.”
Electing to take a more northerly routing, in theory risking more violent conditions in order to gain the best wind angle advantage as they emerged from the worst of the weather, Golding and Sanso suffered short term for their gains.
The British skipper admitted that they felt they had a clear idea of what they were in for, and in the end got more, but ultimately feels that they played their strategy slightly better than the boats which went further north.
And in effect their choice has given them a theoretical lead amounting to more than one day on the winners of the last three Vendée Globes, double winner Michel Desjoyeaux on Foncia with Jeremie Beyou and Vincent Riou and Arnaud Boissieres on Akena Verandas.
The MGYR pair have had not had any wind readouts and autopilot problems with their problems starting on the first night. Even now as they race south in brisk trade winds style conditions, the lack of pilots means hours of hand steering, whilst Golding says they are measuring their attack by their gains and losses against their two French protagonists.
Mark Lloyd / Lloyd Images
“It is completely unknown, we have no idea what the windspeed is, we have no way of judging it other than the data we normally get.”
“ We’ve been dong quite a bit of hand steering. One of the disadvantages of this is we can’t track the wind, normally you would track the boat to a wind angle, and the boat steers its way to that wind angle round each tiny windshift and change. All we can do is set it to compass, and that it goes a nice straight line, but with every windshift and small change you are going faster or slower. So consequently we are trying to do as much hand steering as possible, but as a consequence it is pretty tiring between the pilot and ourselves.” Explained Golding today, “We are doing our best to hold on to Safran, but we are struggling a bit in terms of just knowing where we are, particularly going downhill. We kind of forget how reliant we are on our systems to give us advice on our sail plans and all that, and now here we are just trying to judge whether we have enough or not. Sometimes we are right and sometimes we are wrong. It is quite hard to gauge it, and to some extent we are using them to measure it, if they are faster we push harder…and if they are slower…..well we push even harder!”
“It is completely unknown, we have no idea what the windspeed is, we have no way of judging it other than the data we normally get.”
He feels their position will strengthen meantime, but their race is far from a done deal:
“ I think there is some opportunities for compression in the future, but the reality is that we have been dealt a glamour hand, us three boats, Bel, Safran and Mike Golding Yacht Racing, it does look like if the gate does not exactly close behind us, it does make it quite hard for them to keep up, because of the way that the weather is closing the door behind us, but as near as dammit.”
“And for me the reality for the boats in the north is that they may not get round this high and may end up going upwind on the other side of it, our position looks very strong, but, hey, you never know with yacht racing, it’s a strange game and there is still a long way to go, and there are some very light airs forecast just prior to the Carrbbean and you could well see the fleet coming in on us before we have even reached the Caribbean Sea. Who knows.”
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