Never give up, never surrender

madforsailing gets up to date with Mike Golding as his newly remasted Open 60 returns home

Aside from making gains in the weight and stiffness of the new spar, they have also changed the configuration of their rotating wingmast rig. "It's probably more than 10% lighter, which is good" says Golding. "In fact it's more because we've got no diamonds any more, but we do have lowers and a babystay. This is a very good idea for the Vendee because you'd only lose the top of the mast a la Parlier [in the Vendee Globe]. That's how Parlier managed to hold on to his rig. If his rig had gone like mine there would be no way he could get the rig up again.

"So the advantages are less weight, less windage. We've also shortened the deck spreaders by a lot to allow us to sheet round the outside. Our gennikers will still go through . We didn't want to change our whole sail programme because of an alteration. Hopefully, if we've done this right, if the CAD model works, we will have exactly the same genniker scenario as we had before for Code 5s and code zeros with the benefit that we'll be able to sheet right the way round the outside for kites, which will allow us to fly bigger kites and masthead kites as well. So we're gaining downwind speed all the time. At Lorient on one downwind leg we held Sill when we had one reef in the main and they had no reef."

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The deck spreaders widen the shroud base allowing lighter weight rigging to be used, but are rather vital in keeping the rig standing...