| Velux 5 Oceans: Mike Golding struggles to negotiate South Atlantic high |
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| Wednesday, 15 November 2006 | |
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Coralie Rassinoux: Relatively slow, upwind going is frustrating Mike Golding on the Velux 5 Oceans solo round the world race as he struggles to negotiate the South Atlantic High which is about to bar his progress south, an effective roadblock as he tries to pursue race leader Bernard Stamm who is calculated to be 565 miles ahead of ECOVER this morning. “The high pressure is going to move in front of me, so I am still on the upwind side of it, and it is going to move underneath me tonight and tomorrow.” Said Golding this morning, “It is not a good position and, in fact, it is a very bad position at the moment I think that Alex is probably ahead of me, and Bernard is obviously considerably ahead of me. By the waypoint I think he will be two days ahead of me and Alex a little closer.” “Our goal was to try and get through the system, to do the same as Bernard, but that was not possible. Once we had to peel off going straight through, it was inevitable we would have to take some pain from the high.” “I don’t really have many options. I am having to sail on an unfavoured tack to get myself south so that I can round the back of it, I had a little stab at the other tack last night to slow my progress south while it passes underneath me and while I was doing that I wasn’t losing miles, so I am on port tack now but was on starboard all last night and didn’t lose very miles to Bernard on that, but slowed my progress south a little.” “I don’t think you ever learn to cope with these kind of frustration and I think it is quite damaging, unfortunate for the race really because there was a chance of getting it all back together, but now it rather looks like it is back to where it was before, at the beginning. So frankly it is pretty demoralising at the moment.” What awaits the fleet at the other end of the Southern Ocean, the approach to Fremantle is really anyone’s guess at this stage, and Golding was certainly in no mood to predict any positive possibilities. As he explained, a high pressure and light winds could plant itself in front of Stamm, but could also arrive to hamper him still further. www.mikegolding.com Velux 5 Oceans album |
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 15 November 2006 ) |
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