Ecover second home

Marcus Hutchinson talks to James Boyd about his epic voyage with Mike Golding on Ecover

Hairy and tired, Mike Golding and Marcus Hutchinson arrived in Salvador de Bahia in Brazil in second place in the Transat Jacques Vabre's monohull division to a fireworks and caiparinha reception yesterday.

The duo sailing the Groupe Finot design Ecover arrived at 0630 GMT, 5 hours and 17 minutes after Roland Jourdain's monohull winner, Sill Plein Fruitand with an elapsed time of 16 days 18 hours and 40 minutes.

Despite being roundly beaten by Roland Jourdain and Gail le Cleac'h, it felt like a momentous victory for Golding and Hutchinson as they finished first in a private battle with Nick Moloney and Mark Turner on board Ellen's former Kingfisher, now named Casto-Darty-BUT.

The two boats have been neck and neck for the last five days since leaving the Doldrums. "I was very grateful," commented Hutchinson, "because it kept us competitive." This was only concluded in the final hours as the boats approached the finish.

The TJV is the first occasion that Golding's older generation boat has proved a real match for the former Kingfisher. Previously when the two boats have lined up in the Europe One New Man STAR, the Vendee Globe and then the EDS Atlantic Challenge, Kingfisher has always proved dominant. Aside from sailing a good race, Ecover clearly has improved her pace upwind thanks to her new daggerboards that are much longer than the originals and a new mainsail with less roach in it.

Golding and Hutchinson set the tone for their race when on leaving Le Havre they took a more northerly route down to the Channel than the rest of the fleet and once out into the Atlantic stayed on the right hand side of the track. This tactic paid off and by midway through the first week Ecover was in the lead and slowly pulling clear.

From his hotel room in the Brazilian beach town Marcus Hutchinson takes up the story. "We blew it because we didn't react fast enough to crossing the ridge of high pressure at the level of the Canary Islands," he said. "We lost our lead of 20 something miles and two days later we were 180 miles behind Sill in sixth place."

The ridge ran north to south and they were beating upwind to the west of it while Sill was to the east of it in favourable conditions. Hutchinson believes they were six hours late reacting by which time it was too late. They had been advised by their routers Commander's Weather to go east, but because of problems with their Inmarsat B satcoms, they were unable to verify this and at the time 'west seemed best'.