The team leapt into the lead on the approach to the Doldrums by taking an extreme westerly crossing point – so far west, they couldn’t actually lay the scoring gate without putting in a couple of tacks to hitch a few miles to the east. With the four points earned at the scoring gate, Green Dragon moves to the top of the leaderboard, with six points.
“We’re delighted on board. We’ve been leading for a few days now and and every single position report we’re watching to see if they’re closing in us, but we’re holding them off,” said skipper Ian Walker as the boat roared through the scoring gate.
The ‘they’ he’s referring to are Ericsson 4 and PUMA, both of whom are closing in rapidly. Over the 24 hours to 10:00 GMT, PUMA had gained 12 miles and Ericsson 4 had taken a 15 mile bite out of the lead. But both have run out of runway to catch Green Dragon before the scoring gate.
“I don’t think anybody was expecting us to do as well as this at the start of the race,” Walker said. “I guess we were hoping if things went really well for us to be in the top three. But we certainly never expected anything like this at the first gate.”
The position at the top of the leaderboard may be short lived. If PUMA get’s there ahead of Ericsson 4, she’ll leap to the top. If its Ericsson 4, there could be a three way tie at the head of the table when they leave Fernando de Noronha in their wakes.
The design and build of the boat was funded by a group of Irish business people including John O'Sullivan, Richard Burrows, Jed Pierse, Gerard Barrett, Eamon Conneely, Michael Cotter, Tom Roche, Denis O'Brien, John Killeen, Gerard O'Hare, Brian Lynch, John Flaherty, Enda O'Coineen, John Coyle, Anne Heraty and Paul Carroll.
