I was going to write something foolish for to day and run into a story about how we found a turtle trapped in the dagger board case which explained the unusual scratches on the inner surface of the dagger boards and how the turtle bit Matt as he was being extracted through the bearing and into the light of day in Rio on the first of April.
But we have way too much to be getting on with. The Green Dragon is in good nick considering she just sailed 12300 miles, on the other hand she is well built and strong. lessons learned from leg 4 to throttle back a bit when flogging into head seas probably helped but we still have a rather large maintenance list and at this point only three days to go to be ready for the inport race on Saturday the 4th April. We are now into day 4 of our mini refit and maintenance period, we have had a good run and took advantage of the good weather for the first couple of days , as soon as the Green Dragon hit the dock and before the crew had their first swigs of bubbles we were already aboard unloading all the gear, one hour later we had the crane hooked up and we pulled the rig and laid her on the ground, and almost immediately we hauled the yacht out into her cradle before any of the crew had their first much awaited shower,
Since then we have been all over the hull interior, mechanics and engineering the electronics and the mast for a full inspection, and I must report all good. Our eclectic shore team have been busy as usual doing what they do best and the result is amazing, in four days we have the dragon turned around again, all foils re-faired and painted and everything under the water prepped ready to splash in inport mode Thursday Afternoon 5 days after the Green Dragon rolled into Rio and just in time for the practice race Friday lunchtime ahead of inport racing Saturday and the pro-am racing Sunday.
Next weeks schedule is to turn the yacht around again into offshore mode and spend the week getting ready for the restart to Boston No turtles were harmed during the writing of this foolish blog !
