Do we go to Hong Kong, Xiamen or even Shanghai to make repairs? Do we go back to Subic Bay? Is it safe to cross the Straits in the current weather? Should we soldier on slowly and nurse the boat to Qingdao - maybe even get there without retiring and using the engine? Right now we are doing just that but more damage could rapidly change things”. The crew will continue to assess the situation and are at present still carrying on, albeit gingerly. This leg is far from over for the Dragon, the crew remain 100% focused on getting to Qingdao, “There is nothing we want more right now than to sail into Qingdao however long it takes us”. Latest updates from onboard suggest that the crew and boat are well and sailing at 90% capacity.
Elsewhere five more boats remain on the race course, Telefonica Black who are now officially retired from the leg, have pulled into Subic Bay, which must seem like a familiar site for the locals after seeing two Volvo 70’s in the Bay the previous morning. Telefonica Blue still holds a plus 38 mile lead over the two Ericsson twins who are chasing hard, but conditions in the region are challenging. Volvo’s race expert Mark Chisnell filled us in:
Telefonica Blue, Ericsson 3 and 4 have all been struggling with some difficult conditions. What was happening was that the wind had shifted round to the east, and was blowing directly onto the shore of Taiwan that the leaders were sailing along – and it’s very mountainous. The breeze was swirling up and over the land, making conditions along that windward coastline very difficult.
It was a long weekend for the whole crew onboard Green Dragon, Tom Braidwood updated us on what it took to get the job done….
It was not great news for us, 4 hours after I had been in the bow checking for any signs of damage from slamming we had the big bang. The bulkhead back from the water tight bulkhead, cracked in 3 places, the cracks went from the hull through to the inside of the bulkhead and in all but one through the capping. The bulkhead has also parted from the hull skin in local area around the cracks and also the Longitudinal’s coming off the bulkhead had come away from the hull also. We headed back to a safe anchorage to affect repairs arriving early that night. During our trip to port I had sent photos to the engineer and spoken to Tim on the phone and discussed how best to repair with the materials we had onboard. We had a great team of blokes rotating to help myself and Neal Mac. Starting with removing the damaged secondary bonding (carbon taping to hold bulkheads to hull) then keying up all areas needing gluing or laminating (keying up is sanding the area so the new carbon and resin can stick). We also needed to trim up carbon plate to fit the areas we wanted to support. The carbon plate would be glued and bolted to either side of the bulkhead where it had cracked through. We had some carbon plate on board, but we also needed to cut up the media desk for some extra!
Next was to measure out lengths of carbon cloth needed for each individual area. We needed to be very fast once we started laminating as we have limited resin and time to do the job and would all be done in one hit. All the carbon plate had bee dry fitted, so next was to laminate and glue. Animal (Andrew McLean) and Wendy (Phil Harmer) were the mixing and wet out team, Neal Mac and Justin were in charge of the gluing and bolting of the carbon plate, whilst myself and Wendy laminated. It all ran surprisingly well, Guo kept the cameras going as well as lots of coffee which was much needed as we were all pretty tired. We finished some time around mid morning all very pleased with our effort, and were very grateful to Youngster (Anthony Merrington) who had started a big cook up of bake beans and sausages when he woke up. The job got a bit of time to cure, maybe not text book stuff for sure but was hard when we left. Neal and I took the opportunity to get rid of the carbon itch on our skin, and had a good swim and inspection of the foils. I swam over to the Delta Lloyd boys to say hi. Wendy and the lads got onto repairing the sails, plenty to do there. And we left later that afternoon.
Unfortunately after all the hard work the frame broke again above all the repair work. So now we are sailing along nursing the boat yet again, with a storm trysail and storm jib just trying to get to the finish line. All very disappointing but we have changed our focus to the challenge of just getting the boat there and facing expected freezing conditions ahead. There are a few of us blokes who grew up in the southern latitudes who do not like the cold. Our shore crew have sent reports of it being -10C in Qingdao - YOU ARE KIDDING!
