Elevating Their Game - Volvo Ocean Race We have some of the best sailors in the world on this boat, people who are used to winning. This isn’t a situation they are used to dealing with...
Had Ian Walker chosen to crank up the volume on "Elevation", the U2 song used as Green Dragon's team music, he surely would have been forgiven. If anyone needed a pick-up, you might assume it would be his crew.
Onboard, there's Damian Foxall, the Barcelona World Race winner. There's Neal McDonald, an enormously respected race veteran, and Justin Slattery, a past winner of this event.
Throw in the likes of Ian Moore, Anthony Merrington and their well-regarded youngsters it's quite a hit list, even if you discount Walker's two Olympic silver medals.
But today they finished last and overall they are now fifth of seven active boats.
The issue would not appear to be one of crew ability, more one of boat speed, an area where Walker believes they are "5% to 10%" slower in reaching conditions because of their keel bulb, which is a tonne lighter than the upper limit.
This leg, therefore, was something of a nightmare. As navigator Moore said: "The first half wasn't even vaguely navigational, it was a 4,000-mile reach."
With that in mind, he admitted expectations were low going into the sixth leg. "We are a bit shy on bulb weight and as soon as you are reaching you are enough off the pace to make it impossible to keep up with the pack," he added. "If we had that extra tonne I honestly think this would be a very quick boat."
He continued: "There was always a possibility we would come last in this leg; never wanted to say it in the beginning, hoping we could pull something out of the bag, but sadly it didn't happen."
Indeed, the numbers show that. They were second after a day, having sensibly chosen to stay inshore and profit from the land breeze. But within another day they were last and there they remained for all but a handful of three-hour periods in the remainder of the 15-day leg. Even the position reports that had them as high as fifth in the final few days were inaccurate, according to Moore.
"We were always 20 or 30 miles behind Delta Lloyd," he said. "The figures might have said otherwise, but we never got ahead of them, we could never tack across them. Never saw another boat after the first night."
In other legs they have been able to bridge the gap through clever navigation and more favourable conditions. But they had few opportunities for either in this leg. On occasion they did excel, such as their start and also the approach to the scoring gate, when they made sizeable gains by better judging the lay-line. Likewise, in the latter stages when the fleet compressed.
"We always hoped the second half of the race would allow us to do something and sure enough it closed up and we did a good job getting to the front but we never seemed able to use any of the leverage we tried
