Sam Goodchild in the Vendée Globe: "If I reach Cape Horn in the top-10, that will be a success."
by Agence TB Press 12 Dec 2024 09:51 GMT
12 December 2024
Sam Goodchild on board the Vulnerable in the Vendée Globe © Sam Goodchild
The British yachtsman Sam Goodchild who is in seventh place in the Vendée Globe solo round-the-world race on board VULNERABLE has now passed Cape Leeuwin on the southwest corner of Australia after a month at sea.
After the Cape of Good Hope on the southern tip of South Africa, that is the second of the three Great Capes that mark the key milestones in the Southern Ocean in the Vendée Globe. But Goodchild says he is not thinking about the third one - Cape Horn, the most feared headland in world sailing - quite yet.
"Cape Leeuwin came up quickly, but I'm not looking at Cape Horn as the next target," he said in a satellite call from on board his boat at a position about 700 nautical miles due south of the Australian coast. "It will be the International Date Line first, then Point Nemo (the most remote point on earth in the Southern Pacific) and then Cape Horn."
Goodchild is currently 855 miles behind race leader Charlie Dalin and 100 miles behind sixth-placed Nicolas Lunven. He said the Southern Indian Ocean had lived up to its reputation for "being difficult and fast-changing." He is now hoping that when he reaches the Southern Pacific it will live up to its own reputation in the race for being a little easier.
"The Pacific is the biggest ocean in the world and there is normally a chance to get a little bit more into the run of things, with depressions that last longer and with less change. The Indian Ocean lived up to its reputation, so I'm hoping the Pacific will do the same," he said.
Over the last couple of weeks Goodchild, who led this race early on, has held onto his impressive seventh position on a boat that is not as well adapted to Southern Ocean sailing as the newer boats ahead of him and immediately behind him. He says that if he can stay in the top-10 by Cape Horn, he will be happy.
"Honestly the Southern Ocean is not the strong point of my boat," he explained. "It's not the most comfortable in a sea state, so if I can hang onto my position in the Southern Ocean that's going to be a success really. I've got a boat that's probably going to be a bit more comfortable in the Atlantic. So my aim is to try and keep sailing tidily, keep the boat in one piece, don't break too many things, and then see where we are at the end of the Southern Ocean."
The VULNERABLE skipper, whose teammate in the Lorient-based TR Racing team, Thomas Ruyant, is three places ahead of him in fourth position, says it is impossible to predict whether he can climb from seventh to the podium by the finish. "I've honestly got no idea," he said. "If you look at the last Vendée, it was decided in the Bay of Biscay on the last night, and two Vendées before that it was decided off Brazil on the way south. So it's hard to say. The important thing for me is to make my way out of the Southern Ocean in racing condition, with no broken foils and all my sails in good condition. Then there are definitely places to be gained going up the Atlantic and we'll go from there..."
The 35-year-old Briton, who won the IMOCA Globe Series Championship in his first year in the class in 2023, says he has been impressed with Dalin's performance at the head of the fleet during a fast-paced crossing of the southern Atlantic and then the Southern Indian Ocean. "Charlie is bloody good, isn't he?" he said. "I wasn't completely amazed to see a foil breaking on Séb's boat after the speed they've been going. But yeah, it's impressive what they are doing and the weather will decide whether we get the chance to race against them again, or whether the race is done and it's a fight for the smaller places now."
Right now Goodchild has been dealing with his first major technical issue on board since the start, in the form of wear and tear in the attachment points of the twin rudders at the stern of his boat. This has required him to slow the boat down and climb out at the back to swap small components over - a delicate operation with the ever-present danger that something might fall into the water.
But Goodchild believes he has sorted out the problem which was affecting both rudders and he is hoping the fix he and the team have come up with will last to the end of the race. "It's pretty stressful hanging off the back of the boat with lots of reefs in and with various bits in your hands all greased up, and knowing that if you drop one of those pieces it's game over, race over...so I am very happy it's behind me," he said.
He said he is enjoying the race more than he expected to and that, so far, it has not been as hard as he imagined it would be. However, he said dealing with technical issues brings a special kind of stress which is not easy to cope with. "More difficult is the technical side of things, judging the whole time how hard you can push and then, when you have a small issue, deciding whether to throttle back or carry on going and see it become a major problem. I'm finding that balance quite hard and I underestimated that and the stress that that involves. So some bits of the race are easier than I expected and other aspects harder," he said.
Asked what he is missing most, Goodchild said it is his family. "I've got two young girls and it's hard to see them growing up through a phone," he said. "The two-year-old has already changed since I left and by the time I get home she will have changed again. On the boat, I guess sometimes some peace and quiet would be nice - just no noise would be good!"
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