Ian Walker's Green Dragon team has become the first boat to enter into 'StealthPlay', a move that hides the Galway boat's position from the other teams – and us – for 12 hours.The race organisers introduced the SteathPlay concept as a way to give the skippers and navigators a way to express their creativity allowing a team to make a move without the others knowing what they are doing.
With position reports being issued to the fleet every three hours, there is very little time for a team to make a break from the others.
Green Dragon entered StealthPlay at 0400 and will not re-emerge onto the radar screens of the opposition until 1600 today.
Teams are allowed to make one StealthPlay on each of the long offshore legs.
Meanwhile, out on the race course, Ericsson 4 and PUMA appear to have made the correct choice by sailing around the east of the Canary Islands. They've leapt out to a 29 mile lead over the (presumed) third place Ericsson 3.
And how about Delta Lloyd? The last-minute entry is up to fourth place on the leaderboard, also benefitting from better conditions to the East of the Canary Islands.
(If you're following the race on the TracTrac race viewer, you'll see Green Dragon in its last known position before entering into StealthPlay. The DTL, DTF and Leg Position calculation is based on the 0400 GMT position report and will soon be replaced by the StealthPlay logo.
The Volvo Ocean Race organisers who have trumpeted the benefits of its online race tracker remain red faced. In a website statement the organisers say "it sincerely regrets the technical difficulties that it is experiencing in bringing a fully-featured race viewer to followers of Leg One of the Volvo Ocean Race"
The statement continues: A back-up solution for the possibility of a delay in being able to implement Virtual Spectator, our first choice of tracker solution, was planned for the start of Leg 1. Thanks to the great support of Trac-Trac, this has been working since the start and has already had a couple of upgrades. It is viewable here.
As soon as the Virtual Spectator solution is operating with stability we will make it available our website.
The leaderboard, however, along with the actual data from each of the eight boats, is fully functional and is visible here.
Volvo Ocean Race sincerely apologises to all race followers for this regrettable delay.
