Meeting the Open 60 skippers

In St Malo Ellen, Mike Golding, Nick Moloney and Roland Jourdain got together to give their views on the Route du Rhum

From left to right (above) Roland Jourdain, skipper of Sill Plein Fruit, Mike Golding, Ellen MacArthur (pronounced Mac-A-Tur in French) and Nick Moloney.

Earlier today British skippers Ellen MacArthur and Mike Golding, were joined by Aussie Nick Moloney and French Open 60 favourite Roland Jourdain to talk about the Route du Rhum

Ellen MacArthur on the possibility that this may be her last solo race on Kingfisher:
“The way I’m trying to see the race at the moment is that we haven’t started it yet and, sure, it is likely to be my last solo race on Kingfisher but we’ve not actually made it to the start yet or crossed the start line and once we get across the start line we’ve got a long race to Guadeloupe. At the moment, sure, it is not the most positive of feelings but at the same time we’ve got a race to do and that is what the focus is.

Although I am not planning to do any single-handed races on Kingfisher in the future and at the moment we have set the plan until 2006 but that is not to say that I won’t race her again in some shape or form – at the moment, I’m not planning to but never say never.”

Ellen MacArthur on what might happen to Kingfisher:
“I think it would be pretty sad to see her sitting in a museum – maybe in 30 years time but at the moment I think she’s happier out there on the water.”

Ellen MacArthur on some of the modifications to Kingfisher:
“Over the last winter were the biggest changes we made. We made the boat 350 kilos lighter by changing the rigging, the size of the keel bulb and the keel itself. So she’s got a new keel with a slightly longer foil which weighs 200 kilos less and taken 150 kilos out of the rest of the boat

Mike Golding on the changes to Ecover:
“Well, the main thing was to put the mast back up after Lorient(!) and making some modifications to the mast principally removing the diamonds and, obviously, like Kingfisher our efforts have been to remove weight and windage and improve our stability more for performance reasons combined with the safety of the boat. But other than that our boat is already quite highly developed anyway and there is rather less room for us to make changes that actually move us forward. The biggest one is the rig changes – getting rid of our diamond spreaders will definitely improve our upwind performance but it will be small. It is small changes - but lots of them.

Ellen MacArthur on the heavy weather forecast for the start:
I think the Route du Rhum is renowned for starting in strong breeze – it starts in November like the Vendée Globe and the strategy at the end of the day is to get west – that is the way everyone sees it. If you look at all the routes from the boats in the last three or four Route du Rhums the old traditional view - of heading south, getting into the Trade Winds and across the Atlantic - is not the way it has been run the last few times. The boats have got better upwind and, therefore, we are able to make more ground upwind before heading down to the Azores. And that’s not to say that it couldn’t change this time but at the end of the day if don’t look at the old routes and see how they have fared on them then you would be wrong to do that. And it’s not the same race it was 20 years ago but there is a lot of area for improvement and choices in that getting west and if you look, for example, at Bourgnon’s route last time and the time before, so 1998 and 1994, they are very different and yet they both still using the same view of getting west and going south.

We’re still two days before the start as well so it's not like we know exactly what’s going to happen, the weather is evolving every day.

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