SAILING:THE PRESSURE is on, as we've been pushing as hard as we can on deck, trying to get everything we possibly can out of the Green Dragon, but the reality is our yacht just isn't as fast as the rest of the fleet in these sailing conditions.
We’re all upbeat and on good form, as at least we’re experiencing some fast sailing, which we love and we’re still within striking distance of the opposition. We’re just waiting for the others to make mistakes or crash into areas of no wind in order to make some gains.
Within a few hours of leaving Rio we had advanced into second place, just behind the leader Telefonica Blue. But as the conditions changed, we fell back to seventh, as our opposition just slid by with ease. There was nothing we could do – we’re just lacking in horse power.
On this point of sail known as “reaching” where stability is key, we’re an average four to five knots slower than the other new generation yachts on each three-hour schedule and two knots slower than Delta Lloyd (which was my old boat ABN Amro One, the overall winner last time).
We’re looking at Ericsson 3 who have been sailing like an unguided missile since the start, often going in the wrong direction, and yet they’re up there in second place because they have such a fast boat.
We’re now halfway to Boston, but our on-board weather routers are forecasting conflicting weather for the coming week. One puts us on a fast ride, finishing in just under a week. The other has us taking a little longer, with more unsettled weather, which might offer us more chances to overtake.
We’ve just got to keep on grinding away, hoping for an opportunity, which is exactly what happened at the scoring gate – the Fernando de Noronha island.
As we approached, the breeze shifted to the north meaning some of our opposition had to tack to lay the island. We managed to make significant gains as we’d taken an easterly route.
Unfortunately, the Dragon just picked up seventh place at the scoring gate – a far cry from when we rounded in first place during the first leg. However, we were now much closer to the leading pack.
Having sailed well at Fernando, we were able to keep up the pace at the Doldrums.
Our navigator, Ian Moore, positioned us beautifully and we had a very swift passage through. We got within seven miles of the opposition, bar Telefonica Blue who launched into an impressive lead on the entire fleet. These opportunities are few and far between and we rely on them heavily to stay in the race.
We’re into stability sailing again, which does mean we’ve been dropping back, but as the wind frees up in angle we’ve been managing to hold our ground a bit more and have actually started to reel in both Delta Lloyd and Telefonica Black.
We’ve had the luxury of a full moon for the first few days at the start, lighting up the sky as if we were sailing under floodlights. No need to use torches to trim the sails.
We’ll lose the moonlight over the next week, so we’ll have to get used to sailing in pitch black darkness again – testing our night vision to the limits.
The sea state has been relatively flat so it’s been easy to get some sleep on our off-watch. I’ve got so fed up with freeze-dried food that I haven’t eaten any for two days. At the moment I’m existing on powerbars and coffee, but I’ll have to go back to “real” food soon.
We’ve now crossed the equator for the fourth time in this race and for the newcomers on board that means they have to endure the wrath of King Neptune and Queen Codfish in a makeshift Crossing the Equator ceremony. For James Carroll (Jimbo) that meant the usual punishments including having his head shaved, giving him a very weird bald patch.
He’s now in no hurry to get to Boston as he waits for it to grow back!
This leg has not gone our way so far, but we’re not giving up hope and we’re determined to take whatever opportunities we can. It’s not over yet.
