Oct 16, 2026 · 59 min · 11 segments
Welcome back aboard The Sailing Podcast! In Episode 27, host Theo Stocker and Yachting World Editor Helen Fretter return for Part 2 of their in-depth interview with British solo sailing icon Mike…
Mike GoldingGuestTheo StockerHostHelen FretterHostSo one thing I wanted to ask was in terms of pushing it and performance, obviously, uh, for the Vendée, it's such a sort of a fine line between pushing the boat as fast as it will go and breaking the boat.
How do you judge where that line is, and does that change from boat to boat, event to event? Or even if you're going cruising, does that line then change significantly? But there's always gonna be a line of how hard do I push?
I mean, I think Alex and I, for instance, Alex Thompson and I are quite different in the way we approach that.
On The Challenge we used to, uh, sail with less sail up than you might... than other people might have expected.
Uh, I did teach my crew to always never tell anyone else, uh, exactly what we were doing in certain circumstances.
Uh, but you know, quite often we'd be in conditions and we'd hear of other boats having problems, and we're sailing along with nice safe sail plan.
Um, you just got to find that sweet spot where it's fa- it's not slow, it's fast, but you're not ragging it literally.
And in the solo world and with the 60s, I tended to adopt that strategy as well.
When you get into it, everyone, those in the solo world, they all talk about pulling long shifts and never sleeping.
There is this kind of mystique around, uh, solo sailing that is not necessarily true.
People, you need to sleep, you need to, but you need to do it in short bursts.
Pushing the boat is a, is a similar one because you think you could gybe the boat, or you could do what I call a chicken gybe, which is you tack rather than gybe.
So one thing I wanted to ask was in terms of pushing it and performance, obviously, uh, for the Vendée, it's such a sort of a fine line between pushing the boat as fast as it will go and breaking the boat.
How do you judge where that line is, and does that change from boat to boat, event to event? Or even if you're going cruising, does that line then change significantly? But there's always gonna be a line of how hard do I push?
I mean, I think Alex and I, for instance, Alex Thompson and I are quite different in the way we approach that.
On The Challenge we used to, uh, sail with less sail up than you might... than other people might have expected.
Uh, I did teach my crew to always never tell anyone else, uh, exactly what we were doing in certain circumstances.
Uh, but you know, quite often we'd be in conditions and we'd hear of other boats having problems, and we're sailing along with nice safe sail plan.
Um, you just got to find that sweet spot where it's fa- it's not slow, it's fast, but you're not ragging it literally.
And in the solo world and with the 60s, I tended to adopt that strategy as well.
When you get into it, everyone, those in the solo world, they all talk about pulling long shifts and never sleeping.
There is this kind of mystique around, uh, solo sailing that is not necessarily true.
People, you need to sleep, you need to, but you need to do it in short bursts.
Pushing the boat is a, is a similar one because you think you could gybe the boat, or you could do what I call a chicken gybe, which is you tack rather than gybe.
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