Green Dragon and the Ericsson twins undergoing maintenance on shore in Rio. Image copyright Dave Kneale/Volvo Ocean Race.
"I would almost say we got away with murder." That was the assessment of Green Dragon shore manager Johnny Smullen when he saw the "surprisingly good" condition of his boat after 12,300 nautical miles of sailing.
by Riath Al-Samarrai
The fifth leg was almost twice the length of the second longest stage in this race, but Green Dragon, like most their rivals, have emerged with no major concerns.
It has left Smullen pleasantly surprised, but he admitted his shore team will have to endure some late nights in order to cross off the many small items from their work list.
"We will work long days, about 18 hours from 7am till midnight," he said. "It won't be particularly easy to get everything done, but things could have been a lot worse on a long leg like that. As it stands we just have a lot of smaller jobs to do, servicing mainly.
"To be honest, I would almost say we got away with murder. I think the boat is in pretty good condition. A lot of stuff we have on the list is the same stuff we'd have after a lot of shorter legs, stuff like fixing electronics that got wet. Even though it was 12,000 miles long, I think the biggest wind the guys saw was 40 knots and they've had more than that in other legs.
"All in all I'm pretty happy."
Work is already well underway to get the boat fixed and back on the water by Thursday afternoon. They arrived in fourth place on Saturday afternoon and within a day Smullen's team - 13 people including Smullen and two extra staff hired for this stopover - had washed out and fumigated down below.
The keel was taken out so that its bearings could be replaced, and it went back in last night. "We've gotten off to a good start with it all," Smullen said. "One of our main projects was to take the keel off and change the bearings. They just wear out. We planned on changing them once in the race and we don't expect to do it again.
"Now we are just getting through the work list, which is a lot of little things, nothing major. We have done a full check on the boat and are now just servicing the winches, servicing the engines, the electronics. Just routine stuff.
"The deck paint has taken a bit of a hammering, which makes the deck a bit slippy. We'll re-do that We usually paint the foils and we are getting ready to paint the keel. The daggerboards were probably the most beaten up. That's normal.
"I am surprised, I thought there'd be a lot more breakages. I think the boat is in pretty good condition."
The team now plan to get the boat on the water by Thursday afternoon, enabling them to have a practice sail on Friday ahead of Saturday's in-port race.
Volvo Ocean Race
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