A Moist And Odiferous Vignette From The Vendee Globe…: Mike Golding must not want to talk about strategy much, because he seems to spend a lot of his phone time philosophizing and musing about one thing and another. Today’s exegesis takes us deep into the issues of hygiene aboard an Open 60 sailing around the world. Brace yourself:
“I am minging,” admitted Golding. “I try to have a full body wash with hot water. I tend to do that when I shave roughly once a week.” Other offshore sailors traditionally swab themselves down with ‘wet wipes’ but Golding says these don’t leave him feeling clean.
In terms of clothing Golding wears ‘layers’ of thermals when it is cold as wearing multiple thin layers of thermal-wear is more effective at trapping heat than one thick layer. For the south Golding has four sets of underlayers (worn closest to the skin) plus two extra tops, two sets of mid-layer thermals and two sets of foul weather gear – all of it made by Musto.
He usually rotates his thermals once they have got excessively wet from working on deck through sweat or salt water. “You change them if you are unlucky once every four or five days. If you are lucky you might be able to last a week. But it is unlikely. What normally encourages me to change is if I haven’t eaten and I use that as a pick-me-up and I use washing as a pick-me-up because you always feel better afterwards.”
Getting dowsed in salt water whenever he goes on deck also takes its toll (even though the Southern Ocean it is less salty than the Atlantic) with inevitable salt sores particularly around the cuffs and neck. “You can’t avoid them. The only cure is fresh water and that lasts all of five minutes.”
So far in this Vendee Globe Golding says he hasn’t washed his hair. “Frankly it is fine. It sorts itself out because after a while your natural oils recover because normally we are washing our hair so much your hair doesn’t get the benefit of the natural oils. If you leave it it comes right.”
Golding admits that he regularly has trouble with his feet during long races like this. “Your feet really suffer and you develop lots of hard skin on your feet from being constantly immersed. I’m afraid it got so bad for me the other night I had to take a Stanley blade to the soles of my feet to get the hard skin off. It gets very uncomfortable when your feet dry out, as it all tightens up and your feet ache.”
Down below the smell of festering human is not that bad at present says Golding. However this all stands to change once he is back into the Atlantic and down below starts warming up again.
An intriguing but little known feature of sailing singlehanded non-stop around the world is that due to the amount of time they spend alone at sea the amount of testosterone male skippers produce drops to a very low level. Aside from beard growth lack of testosterone in men can affect the pitch of the voice, temper and as well as a host of more complex side issues… “You certainly don’t need to shave as much when you are out here because your beard slows down,” says Golding. “And it probably changes your demeanour a little. You are less prone to getting angry. It doesn’t mean you are not upset, but you don’t get angry.”
The original round-the-worlders used to change their underwear just once or twice, so I suppose this is an improvement. But testosterone suppression? Who knew?
Gaseous Golding: “This may look like champagne, but actually it’s cologne. And I’m about to dump the entire bottle over my head…”
The Earthist Chronicles 