Yachts & Yachting - July 2018

INTERVIEW PAUL GOODISON

Above

Winning at Lake

Garda ahead of a

220-strong fleet of

top international

sailors

with Artemis Racing while he was out

in Bermuda. With the likes of Burling,

Outteridge, Goobs and Slingsby all

distracted by the bigger task at hand,

Goody consoled himself from the

sidelines of the Cup with plenty of

training time in the Moth. Let’s not

forget that this Rotherham lad has

also got legs of Sheield steel forged

from three Olympic campaigns in the

Laser, the high point of which came at

Beijing 2008 when he all but wrapped

up gold with a medal race to spare. He

and Slingsby, the London 2012 gold

medallist in the Laser, are said to be

the hardest hikers in the Moth leet.

PROVEN RELIABILITY

Ater crushing the opposition in 2017,

it was only natural that Goody would

be pegged as favourite for the Bacardi

International Moth Worlds 2018, which

took place in early April, on the very

same Bermudan waters where Goodison

had done the bulk of his Moth training

the previous two years. he event was

dogged by poor weather which only

enabled a curtailed series of six races to

be completed. It was basically a two-day

regatta. With gear breakage and attrition

always looming large in this leet, the

Moths tend to prefer a longer series to

smooth out all the bumps in the road.

his proved the downfall of some of

the leading lights who sufered with

gear breakage, including Goobs Jensen,

who looked to ofer the biggest threat

to Goodison. But the Olympic 49er

medallist from London 2012 couldn’t

keep his boat together enough to pose

a consistent threat for the world title.

A look at the results sheet suggests

Goodison won his third world title

at a canter, some way ahead of fellow

Artemis Racing colleague Francesco

Bruni of Italy. However the Brit had his

hair-raising moments along the way,

which for Goodison’s conservative ‘belt

and braces’ approach to Moth racing

was unusual and disappointing. “One

of the big things for me in the Moth

is that to inish irst, irst you’ve got

to inish. Yes, it’s quite an old saying

but a lot of that thinking has gone

into some of the design philosophy

of how we put the boat together.”

Goodison had some new gear he

wanted to try out but time – along with

his mantra of proven reliability – didn’t

permit. “We turned up in Bermuda and

we missed a couple of days’ training,

and I didn’t have time to test some new

equipment. So I chose to go with the

stuf that I had tested already in Miami a

couple of weeks before and used for the

Bermuda Nationals.” Having won every

race of the Nationals quite convincingly,

Goody thought to himself: “I’d be a fool

to try anything that was untested.”

NOT ALL PLAIN SAILING

Day one started out well enough as he

went on to win the irst two races of

the Worlds. “he second day looked

like just perfect conditions and going

out there I did the irst warm-up lap. It

was about 20 minutes to go to the start

and was lining up for a speed run with

some of the other guys when the forestay

broke, which meant that the rig came

down. It’s not an easy rescue in a Moth

when all the pieces are in the water

because everything is obviously very

delicate and fragile, and just trying to

rescue it calmly and precisely was what

made the diference in terms of making

sure I was able to get back ashore.”

he rod forestay itself was intact but it

had broken at the terminal. here was no

time for niceties, it was simply a matter

of get back to the race course with the

rig in the boat. “We basically threw the

aerodynamic fairings away and respliced

just a 4mm rope for the forestay and

lined that up and then headed back out.”

It was only in the nick of time but,

having missed race one altogether,

Goody just about made the start of

the second race. “I managed to win

that quite convincingly but was having

real problems with tacking because

the forestay had stretched a little and I

couldn’t actually get under the boom

at times because I was running so

much rake.” hen again, it seemed

to be quite fast, “So maybe I found

something else out by accident.”

Even so, Goody tried to get back to his

normal rake in between races. “Before

the third race that I was swimming

around trying to replace the splice and

pull a little bit of a slack through, which

isn’t an easy job out there. So I missed

the start by 30-40 seconds, which gave

me a bit to do. But I was a pretty quick

upwind and I think I was second or third

round the top mark.” Iain Jensen was

still in the lead and going fast but Goody

MARTINA ORSINI

To finish first, first you’ve got to finish... A lot

of that thinking has gone into the boat design

44 Yachts & Yachting July 2018 yachtsandyachting.co.uk