Richard Tolkien joins ECOVER for final leg of EDS Atlantic Challenge

by Susan Preston Davis on 15 Aug 2001 The fifth and final leg of the EDS Atlantic Challenge gets underway today
when the fleet leaves Boston on the east coast of the United States for the
finish in St Malo, France. The start is scheduled for noon local time and
the fleet should number six again after round-the-clock work by the team
from Sill Plein Fruit on their rig. The other teams had unanimously voted
for a 24 hour delay to the start in order to allow Sill the time needed to
re-join the race.

Mike Golding and his crew are raring to go, the boat is in good shape and
the crew well rested. One crew change in the ECOVER team sees Graham
'Gringo' Tourell making way for Richard Tolkien - a highly experienced
ocean racer who is very familiar on the Open 60 circuit. Conrad Humphreys,
Alex Sizer and Nigel King remain on board.

Tolkien is not a full-time sailor and manages to combine working in the
City of London with an impressive sailing career. He has been racing Open
60s for many years and was first in the class with 'Enif' in the 1991
Fastnet Race and set a new record for the Round Britain Race in her,
winning the monohull class in 1993. He purchased the Open 60 'Fujicolor
3', renamed her 'This Time' and competed in the 2000 Single-Handed
Transatlantic Race. He went on to race in the 2000/2001 Vendee Globe and
was 13th out of the 24 boat fleet at the Canaries and the Equator before
being forced to retire in the South Atlantic with rig problems.

Golding and crew are looking forward to making the most of the downwind
conditions expected for the journey back to Europe - while the first trip
across the Atlantic took 22 days for the whole fleet to finish the estimate
for this leg is 8 to 11 days. The Open 60s are designed for downwind
conditions and it should be 'downhill all the way'. Golding and the ECOVER
team have been waiting for this opportunity to show just what they can do.
Commanders Weather Corp. is forecasting Northeast winds of 9 - 15 knots for
the start and predicts 'When they leave, the farther south and east they
get, the stronger those winds will beUltimately that is going to be the
goal - to get into those stronger west-southwest winds as soon as possible
and run those winds all the way over to the English Channel'