Against the odds

Friday, 24 July, 2008 15:30 GMT

By David O'Brien

There's a famous old saying in sailing that weight is only useful in a steamroller. For the Green Dragon, weight wasn't the problem - it was where they put it. The story of how Green Dragon got around the world without ballast or money is truly unique.

The enduring legacy of the Green Dragon is that against all the odds, her crew never gave up. The achievement over 10 legs and 11 stopover ports in a 37,000-mile journey was saluted on the East Pier in Dun Laoghaire recently at its official homecoming where the British skipper, Ian Walker, paid tribute to the crew and supporters.

The Dragon was one of only four boats in a fleet of seven to finish all the legs of the race, but this was not the original vision for the "serious contender" and the State's biggest-ever backing of an Irish yacht. The crew came together only three months prior to the start of the race and were up against teams with four and five times the budget who had a three-year head start.

Walker, though, had assembled a crew capable of winning: three were from Ireland - Justin Slattery from Wexford had won this event last time out on ABN AMRO ONE; Kerryman Damien Foxall, former winner of the Barcelona race, was on his eighth journey around the world; and the navigator from Belfast, Ian Moore, was a member of the winning Illbruck team in 2001-02.

Readers of the Irish Times will have become familiar with the weekly setbacks encountered on board the Dragon from the race diary of bowman Slattery, and how they battled on regardless.

In spite of the ingenuity of the crew in dealing with problems afloat, decisions made ashore in the planning stages had already sealed the Dragon's fate.

"These problems stem from money arriving late, and the team arriving late. Literally, we arrived and opened the packet within three months of the start. We had the boat and that was it," Slattery says in a recent audio interview.

"It was no surprise to us the boat was slow even before we left for the start," watch leader Foxall said. "We realised the bulb on the keel was light. It's the engine behind the boat and it's not as heavy as the other boats."

"In ocean sailing, you cannot cut corners," said Slattery. The Dragon survived Cape Horn, storms and collisions with underwater objects, but she paid such a high price in rushing to the start line with her limited budget her crew never stood a chance of catching up with the rest.

Only in Boston, where the boat had come in last, on leg six, did the campaign get the money from a last-minute sponsorship deal to cross the finish line.

In December 2007, within 11 months of the race start, a trio of Galway businessmen - Enda O'Coineen, John Killeen and Eamon Conneelly - confirmed that not only was Ireland bringing the Volvo fleet to these shores it was aiming to take the overall trophy home as well.

In a roll-out of international talent at the Merrion Hotel, Dublin that Christmas, Green Team CEO Jamie Boag not only announced a British skipper but Californian designers, Kiwi mast manufacturers, American sail makers plus a team of Australian boat builders working in China.

Walker, 39, a silver medallist from Atlanta and Sydney, was involved with British America's Cup campaigns and said he was relishing the challenge of this global offshore event and skippering the Irish yacht. He acknowledged Ericcson 4 was always going to be a tough nut to crack but at the launch he gave a nod to a podium place.

He was right about Ericcson 4. It won the race with a leg to spare. This was due in no small part to the fact that it had been in design and testing for three years prior to the event.

Walker talked conventional rather than experimental; he had to be because the campaign had neither the time nor the money to waste. It meant they couldn't pare down vital areas to save weight, and there was no time to test the boat properly before the event.

Crucially the engineering of the keel design was skimped on - they say now they had no time to go to the edge.

"The whole package is 450 kilos light but we should also have additional weight in the bulb so we're 900 shy," Slattery told the press in Boston.

The lead bulb on the end of keel is where the majority of weight in most boats is located. It's there for maximum leverage and the Green Dragon's was far too light. The keel keeps the boat upright, and helps transfer maximum power from the sails into forward motion. If your keel is far lighter than those on the other boats, your boat is less upright, and goes slower.

It was a material difference and there was no escape. By comparison, second overall skipper Ken Read agonised over being 20kgs light.

After a high speed collision in leg one, the Dragon went on to break a boom and have a serious hull fracture that threatened her arrival in China.

By the end of leg one and in spite of an uplifting third place, Walker was already conceding the shortcomings. He maintained, however, there were still plenty of tactical opportunities to stay at the front of the fleet.

One of the most frustrating things about the slow boat was it masked how well the Dragon was being sailed.

The excellent crew work and the intense effort of the shore crew rarely manifested itself on the water. Even the sail technology deployed didn't get a chance to shine.

When a boat is going well, there's no happier place to be than among its crew; when things are going badly, it's hard to keep a team together. There would have been few surprises if the crew had walked. It's to their credit that none of them did.

"Having to turn to your team-mates who have put their heart and soul into the project and say we can't honour the commitments we made was one of the low points of the campaign. Nobody likes that," Walker said in his end of term report to the race organisers.

If last into Boston was a low, then third into Galway was the high.

There are no medals for finishing fifth but the result belies Walker's tenacity in keeping the campaign together. And what had failed to spark afloat had lit a fire ashore as the fleet closed in on Galway last May. Downwind in a full gale the Dragon didn't appear to have a problem. She crossed the Atlantic in third place and 10,000 people applauded in the middle of the night.

The associated Let's Do It Galway organisation produced a stunning race festival. Galway, it was said, brought out the best in the Ocean Race and the race brought out the best in Galway, which received a Euros 43 million tourism injection.

A week later and in front of a home crowd swelling to 100,000, Walker suffered the ignominy of explaining away two last places in Galway Bay's in-port races. The Dragon's keel again came in for unfavourable mention.

This was Walker's project. He had sold it not only to a group of Irish businessmen but successfully pitched for the biggest-ever state investment in Irish sailing to the then minister for finance, Brian Cowen.

Attend any of Walker's sailing club lectures and you will hear him say those that prepare the best and train the hardest are normally those who come out on top.

Sailing out of Galway on a wave of national pride was all well and fine, but for some of Walker's Green Dragon crew the finish in St Petersburg could not come soon enough.

There were many ways to win the Volvo Ocean Race and at home the public will remember the Galway stopover as the success story. The reality is that the Irish Chinese entry was a minnow with a campaign budget of Euros 15m, compared with Ericcson's Euros 40m.

Indeed, it's a tribute to all involved in the campaign - from backers to the sailors who took the Dragon around 37,000 miles - that Ireland had an entry in this unique sailing event.

For such a small island nation with an underdeveloped sailing industry, even competing at this level was a magnificent achievement. But these points aren't much consolation to a professional crew whose reputation is judged by race results. For now Walker will have to be satisfied that he brought the crew and boat home safe.

There are less than three years to the start of the next race, but whether another Irish entry can follow in the wake of Green Dragon and NCB Ireland and make it third time lucky remains to be seen.

In a fleet of eight, reduced to seven after leg three, Green Dragon finished the race having achieved three podium positions over the 10 legs.

The author is sailing correspondent of the Irish Times and editor of Afloat magazine.

 

 

Related Audio

• The end of term report - Green Dragon's Ian Walker
• A mixed bag - Green Dragon's Justin Slattery
• Volvo Sailing Podcast May 29th - Reaction to Leg 7 and looking ahead to the Galway In-Port race

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