Golding announces TJV crew

Familiar sailmaker to sail new British Open 60

Mike Golding has chosen Ecover's longstanding sail programme co-ordinator Bruno Dubois of North Sails France to sail with him in the new boat's first major race, the Transat Jacques Vabre.

It is a logical choice of co-skipper as Mike seeks to bring the new Ecover up to optimum speed as quickly and efficiently as possible.

While Belgian-Canadian Dubois has not raced the famous biennial 4,300 mile double handed Transatlantic race from Le Havre to Salvador, Brazil, which starts 3 November, he has a long and accomplished CV in offshore and inshore racing, and has made the sails for the last two winners of the race. He sailed with Mike on the Mille Milles de Calais and the Calais Round Britain Race.

"Bruno has sailed with us many times in fully crewed events and as well as being our sail supplier is also a friend. So it is a great opportunity for me to sail with him. He is a talented sailor and it will be a great benefit to me to sail with him," Golding explains.

"I am already really looking forward to it. I have been working with Mike for more than ten years now and there should be no big surprises for either of us when we sail together," explains Dubois who runs North Sails France and has been sail programme manager for Areva Challenge for the last two America's Cups.

Bruno's ocean racing experience stretches back to building and campaigning a MiniTransat entry back in 1983 and includes skippering Rucanor in the 1989-1990 Whitbread Round the World Race.

He sailed with Ellen MacArthur's crew on Kingfisher II's attempt at the Jules Verne record, has competed on several Quebec to St Malo races and won the Corel 45 World Championships. Dubois joined North Sails directly from the Whitbread campaign and has worked with them in North Sails Denmark and prior to that in North Sails USA.

"Besides anything else it will be great to get back to this kind of racing after every day of America's Cup tuning, testing and racing which tend to be the same, so that will be good for me, and as a company it is good business for me to be in the race and see it up close, as we have sails for more than half the fleet. More precisely it should work well for the programme as when Ellen did the Vendee Globe I sailed with her back from New Zealand to Cape Horn, coaching a little along the way to fine tune the sail selection and trimming and the cross-overs, and this will be the same way. Many of the systems are the same as the previous Ecover and so Mike will already know the boat quite well but we are running quite late for the race and so we use the time we have well. There is no big pressure to win because we are so late, it will be a case of learning the boat and then Mike will be well set to race back single-handed."

The sail inventory for the new boat has been designed by Spaniard Juan Meseguer, who was sail designer with BMW Oracle, the Volvo Movistar projects and Ericsson.
Bruno will sail on the boat regularly in the early tune up period before completing the 1000 miles TJV Qualifier on the boat with Mike.

"The hull is different and the rig is bigger so the sail combinations will need careful learning, seeing how the hull reacts. It will be interesting and challenging," concludes Dubois.