Mike Golding on his dismasting

madforsailing spoke to the Open 60 skipper about yesterday's disaster

madfor sailing finally got hold of Mike Golding this morning to find out what happened yesterday when the mast on his Open 60 Ecover came tumbling down. Speaking to Mike, one gets the impression he has seen this all before and although it is a pain and a problem which may well result in his withdrawal from the Regate du Rubicon, he remains implacibly philosophical.

"It was strange," Golding admitted. "The deck spreader just collapsed. We don’t know quite why yet. Everyone saw the deck spreader break first." The starboard deck spreader used to widen the shroud base on Golding's Open 60 buckled at the bottom close to the mast step. When this happened the four crew who were close to the foot of the mast en route to the new weather rail immediately dived in different directions. These included Guy Barron and Elaine Bunting, Features Editor on Yachting World magazine, who nimbly shot through the gap between the boom and mainsail (we look forward to reading her account).

Pascal Conq of Groupe Finot, the designers of Ecover, was on board at the time and received what Mike describes as "a small bump to his head".

"Pascal thinks that it was a compression buckling failure," continued Mike. "It was over compressed and just buckled. But the strange thing was it was in the middle of a tack. The boat was through the tack, the new sheet was going on and the new runner wasn't completely on." In fact the load was entirely off the rig - the swing keel was centralised, the crew were not on the rail. If there was a time for a rig to come down, this was not it.

When it fell the carbon fibre wingmast did not break. But Golding says that the damage happened afterwards in the swell. "The rig is predominantly in one piece. The sails are not damaged, apart from a small hole in the main. The genoa and headstay are in one piece. Everything is sort of there, but we've got a lot of superficial damage," he admitted. "The stanchions, pushpit, pulpit - everything above deck hardware is damaged."

The rig appears to be in one piece, apart from some abrasion, but Golding says that it will have to be fully assessed in case any serious damage has occurred which can't be seen. Golding thinks this will involve thermal imaging the mast. "There is a possibility that the mast isn't salvagable, but I think that's low." Once the damage has been assessed it will be up the mast's builders, Alucarbone, to specify how it should be repaired.

A new pair of deck spreaders will have to be built. The ones on board at the moment were new after the Vendee Globe - Mike broke one when the boat dismasted after the Vendee start and ended up doing the race with two different sized deck spreaders. He says the new pair were on board for the EDS Attlantic Challenge last year when they stood up to the boat hammering into 50 knot headwind.

As to the Regate de Rubicon Golding says that the probability of them making the start is low. "We've got six days now before the start. We could throw the boat back together. That is a 20% possibility, but we’ll make that call later today. There are other priorites this year to our sponsors for our on going programme and the Rubincon is not essential in that program. It is more important to do a good job with the repair. I'd prefer not to rush it. Our preparation for the Route du Rhum is more important."

Despite the set back Mike sounds quite upbeat when we spoke to him. "I'm painfully growing used to the fact that this is part of the game. It can seem very demoralising, but the fact is if you're pushing the boundaries and you can expect to have some breakage - that happens at the top of any sport that involves technology".