Sailing: Golding `treats' provide comfort and joy
Festivities at sea include flannel bath, cup of wine and a telephone call.
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Your support makes all the difference.LIKE ALL good sons not able to spend Christmas Day with their family, Mike Golding phoned home yesterday. His nearest and dearest had gathered at the family home in the Oxfordshire village of Dorchester and Golding wished them a merry Christmas.
However, once all the pleasantries had been exchanged, his grandmother had a question to ask. "When is Michael going to get a proper job?" she said.
For the moment Golding's "proper job" is single-handed ocean racing and the British sailor made his call yesterday - as is becoming the custom for one of Britain's leading long-distance yachtsmen - from the other side of the world.
He is taking part in the Around Alone Race and yesterday his 60ft Team Group 4 boat was sailing south-west of Tasmania, still with a difficult 1,500 miles to run to the finish of the second leg of the race from Cape Town to Auckland.
This is Golding's fourth circumnavigation since 1992-93, and all four have seen him at sea for Christmas. Not that he lets the day pass by like any other. His Christmas treats to himself yesterday included a complete flannel bath followed by lunch of cured ham and crackers, washed down with a cup of wine, rounded off by a miniature Christmas cake from Harrods.
Golding started this 6,800-mile leg as overall leader, but by only two and a half hours from France's Isabelle Autissier. Now she has again been hit by gear problems and is heading for Tasmania for repairs, which will give Golding valuable breathing space.
But he is being chased by Autissier's compatriot, Marc Theircelin, over whom Golding had a 12-hour advantage in the bank when they left Cape Town. Both of them had been caught between two weather systems which had allowed the second leg leader, Giovanni Soldini of Italy, to stretch away by nearly 300 miles.
But yesterday Golding thought he had escaped into better breeze ahead of Thiercelin and opened up a 50-mile gap. "So I plan to enjoy Christmas when I get to New Zealand," he said.
Golding is not under pressure to try and close down Soldini because he had a five-day advantage from the first leg, but he expects to reduce the deficit over the last 1,500 miles. But, while he is now out of the danger zone as far as being rescued in the southern ocean is concerned, there are problems ahead. "There is a low forming up north which could give me a really bad headwind," he said. "These boats don't like those conditions and I have already suffered shedloads of minor damage." Going the other way, the fleet was assembling in Sydney for this morning's start of the classic 600-miler to Hobart, hoping that Golding's weather does not leave them with a lot of mess to sort out.
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