OCEAN RACE REVIEW: IRISH BOAT UNDERFUNDED, UNDERWEIGHT: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 will be saluted on the East Pier in Dún Laoghaire tomorrow at its official homecoming where the British skipper, Ian Walker, will pay 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 2002.
Readers of this newspaper 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 race podcast on the VOR website.
“It was no surprise to us the boat was slow even before we left for the start,” watch leader Foxall said on RTÉ radio. “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,” he said.
“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.
Until this campaign a round the world novice, Olympic medallist Walker admits he has learned the hard way.
He has given frank interviews on the matter, none more so than when he told British journalist Andy Rice: “When we started to design the boat, we didn’t have the money to build it.
“When we had built it, we didn’t have the money to finish it. When it was finished, we didn’t have the money to race it. And when we had the money to start racing, we didn’t have the money to get to leg three.”
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 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. 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,” a frustrated 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.
When the issue first surfaced, Walker’s argument was he could not afford to let sponsors down by not completing the course, so they chose conservative options and built a safer – albeit heavier – hull. But as the race progressed, that argument held little water as the Dragon fared as badly as others from gear and hull failures.
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.
Lack of boat speed was one thing but lack of money was also having an impact. The financial worries of getting round the world also weighed heavy. The crew stuck together when their wages were halved.
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 a flimsy Irish 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 €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.
Green Dragon’s crew, though, were quite rightly swept up in a wave of national pride that ignored the elephant in the room; a slow boat running on empty.
Perhaps it was this mix of pride and frustration that reduced Walker to tears on departure.
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.
But Walker had been impossibly late coming to the table. Following in the footsteps of other Olympic medallists who had switched to Ocean racing – where skippers are paid as much as €1 million – Walker had the right pedigree but was not the project’s first port of call.
It transpires he never intended to skipper the boat – when he and his business partner, Jamie Boag, shopped around for a skipper and could not find one, Walker ended up filling the role himself. Even more curiously, Walker had been down this road before, not in ocean racing but in big budget America’s Cup racing.
The GBR challenge in 2002 was a €23m campaign skippered by Walker. Britain’s first foray into Cup territory for over 15 years, the project started to late and when the boat eventually got to the racecourse they just weren’t fast enough. Walker said one of his biggest disappointments of the VOR was not having learnt the lesson from the GBR challenge.
Sailing out of Galway on a wave of national pride was all well and fine but for some of Ian 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 €15m, compared with Ericcson’s €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 ten legs.
Results around the world
Race Leg 1 – Alicante – Cape Town – 3rd: Steering the westernmost course, the Dragon was the first to the scoring gate and third at the Cape Town finishing, having been at sea for over 22 days.
Race Leg 2 – Cape Town – Cochin – 7th: After a hard fought battle in the final miles of the leg, Green Dragon crossed the line in 7th place after breaking its boom.
Race Leg 3 – Cochin – Singapore – 6th: The shortest leg so far, the Dragon came in 6th.
Race Leg 4 – Singapore – Qingdao – 4th: A huge accomplishment for the Dragon with nearly half the fleet forced to retire or suspend racing, they finish the leg in 4th place but with bow Damage and broken forestay.
Race Leg 5 – Qingdao – Rio de Janeiro – 4th: Crew changes for this 12,500 mile leg, and Green Dragon is brought to another 4th place.
Race Leg 6 – Rio de Janeiro – Boston – 7th: Greeted by fans in the Boston sunshine, Ian Walker and crew crossed the line 7th.
Race Leg 7 – Boston – Galway – 3rd: A thrilling moment for all Irish supporters when the Dragon secured 3rd place, coming into Galway in triumph.
Race Leg 8 – Galway – Marstrand – 3rd: Ian Walker described it as ‘pretty much a perfect leg’, so no surprise that they came in 3rd.
Race Leg 9 – Marstrand – Stockholm – 5th: A big battle on this penultimate leg, Green Dragon fought hard for the points on offer in light and tricky conditions to come 5th.
Race Leg 10 – Stockholm – St. Petersburg – 6th: The Dragon had a solid start before ultimately placing 6th in the final leg.
Highs and Lows of the race
Third into Galway – 10,000 people applauded at the finish in the middle of the night. The associated Let’s Do It Galway organisation produced a stunning race festival and a €43 million tourism injection for the city.
For such a small island nation with an underdeveloped sailing industry, even competing at this level was a magnificent achievement.
Walker’s tenacity in keeping a flimsy Irish campaign together
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.
Last into Boston.
In front of 100,000 spectators, Walker suffered the ignominy of explaining away two last places in Galway Bay’s in-port races.
