Champagne is on ice in Galway as Green Dragon is expected to begin banking points from a 29-mile lead at the first waypoint tomorrow afternoon. But in truth the Chinese backed team are breathing a sigh of relief that the Doldrums presented a get out of jail card for the boat that was sixth out of eight last week. The VOR fleet have made good their escape from the slow lane and are onto the freeway of the south-east trade winds. Now for the drag race.
Green Dragon, positioned out west with PUMA and Ericsson 4, were the first to profit from the freshening breeze of 11-12 knots found on the exit slip from the Doldrums. Ian Walker’s men were first to cross the equator at around 15:15 GMT. We await tales of the encounter with King Neptune.
Forty five minutes later, by the 16:00 GMT Position Report, the Chinese-Irish entry had extended her lead to 29 miles from PUMA with Ericsson 4 at a Distance To Leader (DTL) of +32 miles.
In the middle of the race track , Telefonica Black (+63) held the edge over sistership Telefonica Blue (+134) and Ericsson 3 (+180).
Delta Lloyd, still the most easterly of the fleet, are still hurting from being last out of the Doldrums. Their deficit to Green Dragon has grown to 222 miles with no immediate remedy in sight.
At least they can take comfort from the fact that the gap to Team Russia (+205), also positioned to the east, appears to have stabilized at around 18 miles.
As Mark Chisnell mentioned this morning is his new-look TEN ZULU REPORT, they are bearing down on the scoring gate at Fernando de Noronha about 210 miles away.
