Mike Golding and a distinguished crew will be competing in the Calais Round Britain Race that starts this weekend – Sunday 22 May. The five-man crew onboard Ecover will be one of seven Open 60s participating in the 1,850-mile dash around the British Isles.

This is the second edition of the Calais Round Britain Race but boats have been racing around the coasts of the British Isles and Ireland for hundreds of years. In the first Calais Round Britain Race, Vincent Riou (PRB) won the race taking just 9 days 9 hours and 48 minutes to complete the course. Ecover took third place just three hours behind the winner.

The final leg of the race will be a sprint run to claim the record for Dover to Calais. Currently the record belongs to Charles Hedrich (Objectif 3) who completed the 19-mile crossing in 1 hour and 18 minutes at an average speed of 14.6 knots.

As a crewed event Mike will be joined by Neal MacDonald, Brian Thompson, Laurent Mahy and Graham Tourell.

Chatting about the race, Golding commented: “It will be good to be back out racing again. Ecover is in great shape and is a credit to my shore team that have worked really hard since the end of the Vendee to make sure that she was ready for this race. We have an impressive crew and it will be especially good racing with Brian and Neal on the team.

“Brian has sailed with us several times and was my co-skipper on the last Transat Jacques Vabre. He is fresh from winning the Oryx Quest and so is in fighting form. Neal is well known to us as a talented sailor he is quite simply one of the best offshore sailors in the UK. I am confident that with this team we stand a very good chance of winning the event, though looking at the opposition – they have great teams also!. For us the icing on the cake would be to also beat the Dover-Calais record, but we have to put a few miles under our belts before we get to do that.”

The 2005 Calais Round Britain Race line-up

Mike Golding (Ecover)

Jean Pierre Dick (Virbac Paprec)

Roland Jourdain (Sill et Veolia)

Jean Le Cam (Bonduelle)

Emma Richards (Pindar Alphagraphics)

Bernard Stamm (Cheminées Poujoulat)

Jean Baptiste Dejeanty (Caen La Mer)