Volvo Ocean Race - Green Dragon hits a snag

by Ian Walker - Green Dragon on 18 May 2009
Latest from Ian Walker onboard Green Dragon, leg 7 of the Volvo Ocean Race.

GREEN DRAGON LEG SEVEN DAY 2 QFB: received 17.05.09 1737 GMT

Why did I have to mention the threat of lobster pots yesterday? Today as we rounded Cape Sable off the Southern tip of Nova Scotia we were confronted by hundreds of them and to make matters worse, it was low tide and the lines were slack with little or no pattern.

After zig zagging our way through with a lookout forward, we eventually hooked one on our leeward daggerboard. Five minutes later we had three of them entangling us. After backing down and clearing two of them we realised one line had sawn its way through the leading edge of the port daggerboard. We managed to raise the board and cut it free but we are left with a 250 cut in the laminate of our daggerboard one metre up from the tip. The rope we hit must have been over a metre below the surface!

We cannot leave the board in this state or the laminate will peel away and the board will start to disintegrate. Right now the watch system is on hold and we have four teams of people working onboard. Two people are sailing the boat as fast as they can with no daggerboards, three people led by Neal McDonald are working to repair the damaged board down below and three people led by Damian are working to swap the windward board end for end into the leeward case and two people are eating or resting. Hopefully we will have the daggerboards reversed and can sail at 100% in the next hour and the port daggerboard can hopefully be fixed before we have to go upwind.

This is a big disappointment as we were in sight of five boats and sailing well. We can only hope that we don't lose touch with the fleet and live to fight another day.

Got to go and help.

Ian Walker - skipper

www.volvooceanrace.org