The two Ericsson boats exited the Straits first, with Green Dragon, Telefoncia Black and PUMA all hot on their heels as they pushed south past the coast of Morocco. The 1600 GMT polling showed Green Dragon in 5th with just 8 miles separating the top five boats. 

1600 GMT Polling - Current positions/DTL

1. Ericsson 4 / 0
2. PUMA / 3
3. Telefoncia Black / 3
4. Ericsson 3/ 5
5. Green Dragon/ 8
6. Team Russia/ 19
7. Delta Lloyd/ 48
8. Telefonica Blue/ 90

Skipper Ian Walker commented, “We have finally escaped the Med despite being parked for hours off Gibraltar. This was frustrating, as we had built up good leads over Puma and Telefonica Black, they were able to sail right up to us in the dying breeze. We seem to be struggling for speed relative to others when the wind shuts down. As of this morning the top five boats could all see each other as we gybed on the shifts heading South down the African coast. We can no longer see Ericsson 4 but Ericsson 3 is just ahead as are Puma and Telefoncia Black”.

Telefoncia Blue were the last to exit the Straits, after suffering a 12 hour penalty pit stop in order to fix their steering issues, are now back on the race course and looking to make up ground on the rest of the fleet. They are currently 90 miles behind the leader Ericsson 4.

Life onboard Green Dragon has been good, although some minor keel issues immediately after the start has meant that Tom Braidwood has been on 24 hour duty to resolve the issue.  For the first day, the crew had been forced to operated the keel system manually, thankfully the system is now fully operational and the crew are focused on hooking into the north-easterly Trade winds as they sail south.  The current routing takes them down the coast of Africa, then through the Canaries before taking a wind shift to get west, and set up for the Doldrums.

Full update from onboard

Everybody is being very cagey covering every move or sail change. Puma and Telefonica Black seem to be very fast downwind in the light and they have consistently sailed away from us. We will have to be patient and hope our turn comes. Everybody on board is well rested now despite lots of frantic tacking and gybing and all the associated ‘stacking’ of gear and sails in the Med. Sometimes it feels more like we work for a removals company than a sailing team as we spend large amounts of time carting gear from one side of the boat to another - at least it will get easier as we use up the supplies! Life onboard is pretty pleasant with light winds and no water on deck. We are carrying out a few minor running repairs and checking the boat over. It appears that Justin and Animal (Andrew McLean) have fixed the J4 halyard problem and we have got to the bottom of the keel issue that bugged us at the start. The only other thing of note was a stowaway passenger we had which was a robin (red breast) that flew into the boat and has been living in the galley. This was amusing for a few hours but we have now lost him and nobody saw him leave. The last sighting was of him flying aft towards the nav station. Hopefully he flew away for all our sakes.

Skipper Ian Walker Green Dragon

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