Mike Golding and Javier Sanso were on the point of emerging from the worst storm yet on this Transat Jacques Vabre two handed race from Le Havre to Costa Rica.
Sounding exhausted this morning, before the news that Seb Josse and JF Curzon have a serious problem with BT and a rescue operation was under way, Mike Golding explained
Mark Lloyd / Lloyd Images
“ It was a rough night really and now we are hoping in the next hour or so to see the back of the squalls which have been coming through up to 65 knots, and just horrendous seas but I am sure that all the boats are struggling in these conditions. It is not an easy time.”
Asked as to the condition of themselves and the IMOCA Open 60, he said:
“ We are both fine. Javier has just gone for some rest. We have both been up all night with just such extreme conditions. We are just trying to push through them and not break anything.”
And he was pleased that the autopilot problem seems to have been solved, just before the worst of the conditions:
“ Yesterday I managed to get the pilots working and so far so good.
Only trouble is overnight we lost all our wind gear, so I got the processor working last night but then unfortunately all that it told us in the end was that each of the two wands had disappeared over the back of the boat. But I suspect there won’t be many boats with wind gear after this. We’ve got nothing left at the top of the rig at all.
Even the windex has gone. We have another wand down below so we will set that up when the conditions get a bit more clement, but it is a deck mounted wand. It is quite common to lose one wand but it to lose two in the same night is unheard of for me.”
The duo lie in a steady third place, just less than 45 miles behind the lead boat, and while they are anxiously awaiting positive news about BT, Golding affirmed:
“ I think at the moment we are just pleased to be still on the race course, we are having to squeeze up a little to try and find a line through, but I have always been quite happy tactically where are, to the south of this group.
“And I’ll be pleased to be the first out of the worst.”
“ We are lining up to pass the Azores in 12 hours of so, and we’ll see what happens there.”
Listen to Mike's audio by clicking this link:
Open/Download >>
