Well, last night Mike Golding officially become the first man ever to finish a global race with no keel. And just as amazing, he still made the podium. Golding sailed the course in 88 days 15 hours 15 minutes, which was just over a day slower than winner Vincent Riou, but more than four and a half days faster than previous winner Michel Desjoyeaux. This morning Golding gave an account of what it feels like to have the boat suddenly sit upright in 22 knots of breeze while you approach the finish of the world’s most difficult sailboat race and are daydreaming about steaks, and booze, and…well, never mind:
“I jumped up and released the mainsheet, and then I felt I was easing a lot of mainsheet, and didn’t really understand why. There was no real noise….no, actually there was a slight noise but it was quiet, it wasn’t particularly noisy, anyway so then I operated the keel buttons for a few seconds and it ran for a few seconds and stopped. I then went below and checked the ballast tanks and made sure there was water in the weather one and the leeward one was empty and they had not dumped the water across, and the leeward one was empty. I looked in the top of the keel and the keel was fully canted. I went on deck to the cap shrouds and looked over the side where you would see the keel and I couldn’t see the keel. It could have been murky water and I was thinking maybe it was murky water so I went down below and got the endoscope out and had a look out through the rudder endoscope fittings and couldn’t see anything forward. I could see the daggerboards but I couldn’t see the keel, but a lot of paint had been coming off the keel so consequently it wasn’t as orange as it should have been and I just thought mabe that was it. Then I looked through the escape hatch and stuck my head in the water and there was a keel, but it was at a different angle to what I had seen at the keelbox, but it was at a different angle but your head doesn’t get round that and I thought there was something I was missing, and I got a torch and looked down the keelbay. Usually when the keel is canted you can see the edge of the ‘olive’ and there should be an orange strip where the blade is and in the middle of the orange strip I could see daylight, and I couldn’t work that out and while I was there, looking, there was a larger crack and that was the keel departing the boat. It didn’t do anything. I had the sails flogging but still had the Solent drawing. I went back round the whole routine again, did every check all over again and that’s when I thought : ‘I’ve lost the keel’.”
Uh, that’s got to be a moment he’ll remember forever. Undeterred, Golding sailed on under reduced sail, averaging a whopping five knots (and touching nine knots at one point) in his suddenly flat-bottomed 60-foot dinghy, and finished well before anyone expected. Nicely done, Mike. It’s not always about the placings…
“In my darkest hour, this is the vision that kept me going: A man. A beer. A burrito. Buurp..”
“If they were impressed that I sailed home without a keel, just think how amazed they’re going to be when I eat this bottle…”
The Earthist Chronicles 