Walker's World Race Diary - 21 November

On day five of leg two of the Volvo Ocean Race and we had sailed about 2,000 miles from Cape Town. For the Green Dragon it has been very eventful, but as the scoring gate (a line of 58 degrees longitude) approached we are narrowly holding on to third place.

It was very nerve wracking as we had given up much of our 50-mile lead over the Russians in order also to go north for the secondary aim of reaching India.

At one stage it looked as though we may have done this too early and that could have meant losing that third place and the three points that go with it, but, in the end, we have it perfectly judged. We have a very strong incentive to go north to escape a second Southern Ocean low which could envelope us if we stay south. Our boat is in no real state for more strong winds reaching right now.

After a fairly benign first 36 hours leaving Cape Town and heading south into the Southern Ocean we have received quite a pounding. Not 60-knot storms, where you have to batten down the hatches, but predominantly 25 to 35 knots - just enough to make sure you have to push hard with spinnakers in order not to be left behind.We have suffered three major setbacks and a bout of 'flu that is going through the entire crew.

Setback number one was a split in our daggerboard case, leading to a lot of water coming in to theGDRA_081119_2301_0~0~0~GDRA interior. As we were planning a fix for this we survived a near terminal Chinese gybe.

Neal (McDonald) was helming with our fractional spinnaker up when we were hit by a 40-knot squall. As he fought to maintain control the steering pulley ripped off below decks leading to no steering on the starboard wheel.

The boat speared down into a bear away and crash gybed, which is about the worst fear you have in these boats. Chinese gybes can lead to dismastings and always lead to a full capsize with sail stack and keel pinned on the wrong side.

Just as water was flooding in the hatches down below and all seemed lost, with Neal hanging by his tether pretty much underwater with all the sails, "Youngster" (Anthony Merrington) managed to grab the leeward steering wheel and by some miracle the boat steered back the right way.

The spinnaker had been backed against the jib and the mainsail fully gybed onto the runners before coming back the right way. Once everyone had finished laughing (nervous I think) we took the spinnaker down and spent an hour jury rigging the steering and fixing the daggerboard which involved removing the daggerboard from the case.

Up and running again we rehoisted the spinnaker but the next day a huge squall (48 knots) caught us and, although we got rid of the spinnaker in time, we still had full mainsail and the boom snapped clean in half.

We took time to recover the pieces and since then we have been sailing without the boom and the mainsail loose footed, which seems quite effective. It will be fine until we have to sail upwind by which time we hope to have fixed the boom (of sorts) with the very limited materials we have.

One by-product is a very full mainsail that it is hard to ease or depower and that we have been reluctant to reef without a boom. This has led to some very hairy moments, including three broaches the other way - it is a good job we fitted seatbelts in our bunks in Cape Town or we would have had human debris down below.

So, back to the race and we are delighted with our position given all that has gone before us. I suspect others have had problems and failures, too, as these boats are difficult to race hard in such squally conditions with so few crew on deck.

I would have been very disappointed to lose 3rd as I could have protected that side, but I had a strong eye on safeguarding the boat and crew and getting north. I was praying that we had judged it right, but there was nothing we could do about it except sail fast.

How we fare on the way to India is anybody's guess and will largely depend on the weather.You would have to expect us to finish last without a boom and our shore manager is looking into flying our spare to Diego Garcia, an island with an airbase in the middle of the Indian Ocean, but we will decide in due course.

Our priority is to make it to India as fast as we can, whatever result that Brings, as we will not have much time there before we leave again for Singapore. If anybody knows me or my crew I wouldn't bet against us doing better than that - but for that we will need lots of light air downwind sailing and a fair amount of luck - about 3000 miles worth!

Watch: Broken in two, the mainsail boom was one of several problems which the Irish entry Green Dragon had to overcome early in the second leg of the Volvo round the world race from Cape Town to Kochi, south-west India