Never give up, never surrender

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

But Golding's biggest desire is to put right what went wrong in the last Vendee Globe.. "I'd like to do the Vendee again," he says. "But if I do it I want to be there on the same basis as we were last time. In other words I want to be there with a proper budget, a proper boat and do it to win. I want to do everything I didn't do in the last race."

For Mike to do the Vendee Globe there are two scenarios. There is doing it in his current boat, which if it is not state of the art, is very much on the pace still and is a boat with which he is thoroughly familiar. "Our boat right now, is almost Vendee ready," he says. "I'd change the daggerboards, but otherwise it is a very well sorted boat. If it came to it I would do it on that boat. I know where she's slow and I know what I'd do to correct it."

But the ideal scenario would be to build a new boat and use the old one for training. He says he is not convinced by the latest changes in the IMOCA rule that are reducing the overall beam of the boat and in particular making them less powerful in the stern. "I'm sure if you gave the job to Finot [Groupe Finot - designers of his Open 60] they'd come up with the same again. I still feel that wide boats are cool [we agree with him]. You have a fast stable platform downwind. Downwind Kingfisher looked skittish compared to us while we were sitting there comfortably drinking a cup of coffee."

He also thinks that there were few lessons to be learned from the last race in terms of boat design. "The last Vendee wasn't representative. It was remarkably mild. Look at the details - there was the crack in Ellen's keel. If the Vendee had thrown up the same weather as it had in 1996-7 would it have survived? The story I always remember, regarding the argument over wide and narrow boats was that of Christophe Auguin [winner of the 1996/7 Vendee] who was just able to keep sailing in heavy conditions and that was because of the big wide platform. We forget all that. The last Vendee was not representative. There was one storm in the south and that wasn't that bad. I know from the Challenge races that you can get a lot worst than that..."

An amusing part of our conversation is when we mention Ellen. Although not someone who gets riled, the in-the-shadow-of-Ellen aspect to Golding's campaign is clearly wearing a little thin with him. "Everyone seems to think we've learned everything off Ellen. Someone's just said to me 'have you thought about doing this sleep stuff like Ellen did?' I was working with Claudio Stampi when Ellen was still going round Britain in her Corribee! I'm alright. My inner self is calm..!" he says with a grin.

A newly rerigged Ecover will be returning to the Solent later this week and during Cowes Week will be out sailing with VIP guests, one of whom it is hoped, will be impressed suitably to come on board as Golding's new long term sponsor.