Fortunes turned on day eight and the Dragons, now positioned to the west, came storming up through the fleet. Navigator Ian Moore had a smile on his face at last. “I guess we will know in the next 24 hours if our strategy paid off, “Moore wrote. “If not, the boys will be very dark.”
Third place was good enough as the team contended with the vagaries of the Doldrums on day nine, but the next day saw them atop the leaderboard, a lead they held until after passing through the mid-leg scoring gate. But, their position was under attack and, on day 14, Telefónica Black snatched the lead. There were just two miles between them, and PUMA was just three nm astern. “We are going to fight tooth and nail,” wrote Walker.
As the fleet geared up for the 40-knot gale and the sleigh ride to Cape Town, Walker predicted that the boats which did not keep up with the pace, would drop off the back of the weather system and lose hundreds of miles.
“It’s our job not to let that happen to us,” he said. On day 18, Green Dragon was in third place, and the most southerly yacht in the fleet. For an hour, the boat averaged 25 knots. “Clearly, doing this for 24-hours (to
chase the record) is another thing altogether and we are on the edge,” he said.
Then, the Dragon was wounded, burying her bow so hard that the spinnaker came back and stove in the pulpit and forward stanchions before ripping to pieces. This was followed by a deafening crunch as the boat hit something and came to almost a complete standstill. “I don’t really know where to start as the last 24-hours have been so incident-packed,” wrote Walker in
his daily blog. As they reached the latitude of 35 degrees south, another spinnaker was shredded as the crew pressed the boat in attempt to catch Ericsson 3. But to no avail. Ericsson eventually finished 27 mm ahead of the Dragons after a long fight.
“There is only one thing for it in Cape Town and that is to get in the bar and trade some war stories as sailors love to do. My story will be of our night time collision and the ensuing panic-stricken thoughts, and of a multitude of nosedives form which I saw no escape,” Walker said today as the team approached the finish line.
The next boat to finish will be Telefónica Blue at around midday GMT today.
Leg One Finishing Order into Cape Town
1. Ericsson 4 SWE (Torben Grael/BRA)
2. PUMA USA (Ken Read/USA)
3. Ericsson 4 SWE (Anders Lewander/SWE)
4. Green Dragon IRL/CHN (Ian Walker/GBR)
Overall Leaderboard (Provisional)
1. Ericsson 4: 14 points (FINISHED)
2. PUMA : 13 points (FINISHED)
3. Green Dragon: 11 points (FINISHED)
4. Telefónica Blue: 6 points (RACING)
5. Telefónica Black: 6 points (RACING)
6. Ericsson 3: 5 points (FINISHED)
7. Delta Lloyd: 2 points (RACING)
8. Team Russia: 1 point (RACING)
