This little dragon has real fire in her belly

SAILING NEWS:WITH THE blessing of the harbourmaster at Portsmouth, the Green Dragon Team slipped quietly from their berth at Gosport yesterday morning and headed for open water at the eastern entrance to the Solent.

A fresh sou'westerly greeted the Volvo Open 70-footer as her mainsail was raised, followed by a small jib.

Bearing away from the wind, the Green Dragon tripped along at an easy 15 knots as sails were stacked along the deck to help trim the boat as she headed past the anchorage for open water.

Minutes later, all hell broke loose as the speedometer rapidly increased to 18 knots, then 20 (the wind was blowing 18-20 knots) and steadily rose as skipper Ian Walker nudged the boat up to her target speed of 25 knots.

A constant stream of water poured over the deck, easily rivalling the average fire hose. As Justin Slattery moved forward along the foredeck to set up the next sail, 70 feet behind he was lost from view in the constant wall of water that flew across the deck and into the cockpit.

Grins plastered on the faces of the crew, despite the torrent, spoke volumes: they were happy indeed.

Five hours and 80 miles later, Green Dragon returned to her lair with no breakages in spite of what appeared to be every effort to cause one. It may not have been the Southern Ocean or Yellow Sea, but the conditions were ideal for sail-testing and figuring just how much abuse could be heaped on the boat.

The big, white-hulled yacht comes out of the water today for final boat-building snags, and by this time next week the Irish-originated, internationally-managed and crewed, Chinese-funded entry for the coming round the world race will be in Irish waters at last. She will be making her final approach to the Port of Cork, where the naval base harbour at Haulbowline will be her new home for most of July.

Coincidentally overlapping with ACC Bank Cork Week, crew-training will be the order of the day before she leaves to visit her official home port of Galway, which will be the staging post for the team's mandatory 2,000 nautical-mile qualifying passage.

Following this, in late August, the crew will sail for Alicante in Spain for a pre-race refit, when the hull will be painted with its sponsors' logos ahead of the beginning of the Volvo Ocean Race proper on October 4th.

All this, after two years of planning and against the foretellings of the doom merchants who first dismissed the notion of an Irish race stop-over, and then moved on to try to scupper hopes of a race yacht as a flight of fantasy.

Instead, two things have happened: the Government swung in behind funding the race stop-over for Galway, a natural transatlantic landfall for the race which is laced with emotional connections with Ireland's diaspora.

And then it emerged that a boat was actually in build at a modern yard in China, from which country emerged a syndicate willing to become title-sponsor. That boat, now sailing as a credible, state-of-the-art racing yacht, has sealed the fate of those same doom merchants who said it couldn't be done.

Nevertheless, Walker appears far from complacent about the progress that has been made and what remains to be done before October.

"Our campaign may have been in the pipeline for two years, but two other teams have already completed building and have been sailing for months," Walker told The Irish Times.

"But we've managed to complete the boat ahead of schedule, on budget and have it delivered to Europe with three months clear to train hard before the race starts."

The team's plans over the coming weeks involve gelling the crew, especially as the entire project now involves 25 people on a full-time basis, between sailing crew and shore-team.