Volvo Ocean Race: Green Dragon closes the gap

10:33 PM Tue 20 Jan 2009 GMT

'Freddie Shanks and Phil Harmer changing sails on Green Dragon, on leg 4 of the Volvo Ocean Race from Singapore to Qingdao, China' Guo Chuan/Green Dragon Racing/Volvo Ocean Race &copy Click Here to view large photo

After a long night onboard Green Dragon, the day is looking brighter as the fleet begins to compress and Ian Walker and his crew make valuable gains on the boats ahead of them.

They have pulled back 17 miles in the last 24 hours, moving from seventh to fourth, as the fleet starts to split and the tactics begin to come into play. The straight marching line for China is no more, as PUMA hold a fragile 3 mile lead over Bouwe Bekking and his crew onboard Telefonica Blue, who sneaked into the lead for a short spell today, only to have the big cat pull it back.

Green Dragon is the most northerly boat in the fleet, along with Delta Lloyd and Telefonica Blue who have also followed tack. You can see this clearly on the race viewer here. The navigators will be watching closely to see if the wind shifts any further to the east, if this happens the boats further east on the race course will make gains. But there is also the north-east monsoon that will come into play.

The route ahead will not be easy, the fleet will need to deal with the new waypoint at South Rock and the geographical nightmare that is the Spratly Islands. A largely unchartered area of atolls, which may cause the navigators some sleepless nights onboard!

Leg Four Day Three: 1300 GMT Volvo Ocean Race Positions
(boat name/country/skipper/nationality/distance to finish)

PUMA Racing Team USA (Ken Read/USA) DTF 1883 nm
Telef?nica Blue ESP (Bouwe Bekking/NED) +3
Ericsson 4 SWE (Torben Grael/BRA) +3
Green Dragon IRL/CHN (Ian Walker/GBR) +11
Telef?nica Black ESP (Fernando Ech?varri/ESP) +14
Ericsson 3 SWE (Magnus Olsson/SWE) +15
Delta Lloyd IRL (Roberto Bermudez/ESP) +18

Updates from onboard Green Dragon:

'I never thought I would look forward to tacking and moving all the gear but we are yet to do any sort of manuoevre since the start so even a tack will be refreshing. This is definately the calm before the impending storm.' Ian Walker

'Right now the wind is down and we are preparing to thread our way through a thousand reefs.' Ian Moore

Dragon Fast facts:
In Southern Asia, the northeastern monsoons take place from December to early March. The temperature over central Asia is less than 25?C as it is the northern hemisphere winter, therefore creating a zone of high pressure there. The jet stream in this region splits into the southern subtropical jet and the polar jet. The subtropical flow directs northeasterly winds to blow across southern Asia, creating dry air streams which produce clear skies over India. Meanwhile, a low pressure system develops over South-East Asia and Australasia and winds are directed toward Australia known as a monsoon trough.

Read more news at greendragonracing.com

by Lucy Harwood

Newsfeed supplied by

#News #Sailing #Delta #North

Volvo Ocean Race: Green Dragon closes the gap

Sports/News

Weather Forecasts & Live Reports

Buy & Sell/Classifieds