| Velux 5 Oceans: Mike Golding continues to make inroads on Stamm’s lead |
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| Sunday, 12 November 2006 | |
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Coralie Rassinoux: With Bernard Stamm slowed for the last 12 hours, Mike Golding on ECOVER has continued to make inroads on the leader of the Velux 5 Oceans solo round the world race. This morning Mike had taken a further 30 miles and since Saturday morning ECOVER has gained 78 miles. Since leaving La Coruna on Thursday 26th October when the deficit on Stamm started at about 550 miles, Mike’s dogged persistence and astute tactics have drawn more than 300 miles off that margin and this morning he was within 252 miles of the defending champion Stamm. Alex Thomson is 243 miles behind Mike now and Kojiro Siraishi is 69 miles behind ECOVER. But these are very nervous times for Golding. While he is pleased to keep devouring Stamm’s lead, the situation ahead will be more critical for Mike as he skirts the high pressure behind Bernard, who will move into the favourable NW’ly winds first and be slung south at a rate of knots. Golding has slowed now and Mike was easing ECOVER gingerly through a maze of calms, working now off a Quick Scat real time satellite image rather in favour of the ‘big picture’ weather routing. The routing is starting to tell him to gybe west and leave the leader’s trail, but while there is still wind and progress south, taking miles all the time on Stamm, Mike is holding his nerve. “There is not a great deal of wind. I am just managing to keep going at a reasonable speed, but it is nerve racking stuff. I have been changing sails all the time. It has been soft (light winds) for most of the night, and it went very soft early this morning. I got some quick scat stuff this morning and have kind of shuffled across the course a little bit with a bit more wind, so I am trying to run down that at the moment. Luckily for me at the moment the fast heading (angle) is where I want to be going.” “On the grib files Bernard is looking reasonable but it does look like he has been stopped or nearly for maybe 12 hours, slow or stopped, and that could allow me to close the gap, but he is still looking good to go through. The files are indicating that I need to gybe and go south west, but while I am still making good ground and I feel I need to stick with it and crack on. I could still make quite a sizeable gain here. Obviously, Bernard will get away again into stronger breeze going out, and I might be left with a bit of a struggle and a park up. I don’t think I can afford to do anything radically different.” “250 miles is really quite healthy and I have been moving really quite nicely for the last three or four hours so I could knock another 30 miles off.” “ I have had all the downwind sails up at different times, kites, Code 5, and now maxi gennaker. The kite needs a lot of fiddling with and I had it up all night but went to the Code 5 and now have gone to the Maxi which is a flatter gennaker which is better when it is lighter.” www.mikegolding.com www.velus5oceans.com Velux 5 Oceans album |
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| Last Updated ( Sunday, 12 November 2006 ) |
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