Ocean Fever: The Damian Foxall Story

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Knights of the Green Dragon

Volvo Ocean Race 2008

End of Leg 1: Cape Town

Billowing clouds swept around the crest of Table Mountain. The sprawling city and suburbs of Cape Town were bathed in glorious sunshine as visitors thronged the historic Victoria & Albert Waterfront in early December 2008. It was 6 a.m. and, stepping outside in running shoes, I closed the front door of our hotel apartment quietly so as not to wake my wife, Suzy-Ann, and our two-year-old son, Oisín. They were still recovering from their long flight to South Africa and it was only the beginning of a long year of travel and living out of suitcases, a roller coaster of emotion that would include disasters and successes, goodbyes and hellos at the dockside as normal life was once again put on hold for them.

I jogged through the crowds, part of the stream of professional sailors all heading to work for the day, following morning workout sessions at the gym. After three weeks at sea non-stop, the change to life ashore was very welcome. Gathered around the quays were the bases of the seven Volvo Ocean Race teams that had just arrived at the end of Leg 1 of the epic 39,000-mile race around the world after starting out from Alicante on Spain’s Mediterranean coast barely three weeks earlier.

At first glance, each 70-foot yacht appeared similar, apart from the sponsors’ colours and graphics that covered every inch of surface area. In fact, the boats varied hugely and were the result of years of collective effort by naval architects, engineers and various scientists even before each was built by a team comprising experts in disciplines from electronics to carbon fibre construction. The level of technology required is comparable to the aviation industry but without the passenger requirement – or the regulation.

At this point, the end of Leg 1 (out of ten) on the ultimate proving ground, the test was under way of the design and build teams and the crews pitted against one another and all, in turn, against the forces of nature across the oceans and seaways of the planet.

Each boat was craned out within hours of arrival, stripped of almost everything not bolted or bonded in place, for the planned refit and repair programmes. The previous three weeks had been punishing on both men and equipment but worse lay ahead. Preventative maintenance now would offset more serious problems later and the restaurants of the V&A were grandstands for the boatyards that had appeared overnight to herald the arrival of the fleet.

Nestling in one corner of the docks, between the slips where Chinese tuna boats were being refitted and the elegant corporate offices of the BOE Stockbrokers building, a small pier near the maritime museum that once served as the team base for the South African America’s Cup Team Shosholoza had become the adoptive home for the Green Dragon team, our Sino-Irish entry in the race.

Compared to the other teams, project management had pulled off a neat coup. While all had pairs of fully fitted shipping containers and marquees leapfrogging around the world to be waiting at each destination, we had the relative luxury of a purpose-built office and dock space with workshops and sail loft ready to move into. Green Dragon had her own berth and the shore team had easy access from their equipment containers just yards away. Team members enjoyed desk space and rows of laptop computers with dedicated high-speed Internet access surrounded by catering-sized jars of vitamin supplements and high-energy drinks aimed at offsetting the race diet of freeze-dried fare. Work lists, calendars and performance charts covered the walls; at this early stage in the campaign, some of the data might have been of interest to rival crews and visitors were welcomed with a wariness in case sensitive information might make its way outside the tightly knit project structure.

The base was indeed a bonus, a saving of effort and precious resources but was still a pyrrhic victory of sorts. Having the use of the Shosholoza facility was a reminder of our underfunded campaign, which was obliged to take whatever savings could be eked out without affecting performance: our own mobile bases were as good as any other team’s but the expense of setting these up could wait till later in the race.

Nevertheless, an upbeat mood permeated the dockside. Local schoolkids arrived to visit the boat; Colin Wrafter, the Irish Ambassador to South Africa, toured the project in person. It was early days in a very long race and we had just delivered what appeared to be a credible result that defied the odds. The sun was shining and all appeared to be well.

On this morning, however, in the boardroom overlooking the base, a private meeting was about to take place and would review in detail everything that had taken place at sea over the past three weeks. Just like the planning that had gone into the campaign, it would be exhaustive and very thorough.

The Beginnings

We were the team that our skipper, Ian Walker, built. Or more correctly, that he and his business partner Jamie Boag built for a syndicate of Irish business people who were deeply committed to sailing and the opportunities that the Volvo Ocean Race offered the country.

As a double Olympic silver medallist, Walker had barely been out of sight of land on the Fastnet Race, such was the extent of his offshore/oceanic racing experience. In the broad church that is the sport of sailing, inshore and Olympic racing are worlds apart; and competitive ocean racing – thousands of miles from land – and inshore racing are equally distant. Yet the challenges of any yacht race and racing tactics, whether inshore or offshore, were attractive for Walker. This plus his team management ability overcame any reluctance to embark on a round-the-world race.

That Walker is one of the best inshore racing sailors around none of us had any doubt. He was certainly no pushover; you don’t get to win two Olympic medals without being one of the best helmsmen in the world; he knew how to drive any boat quickly. But as skipper he had the toughest and loneliest role on board a fully crewed racing yacht at sea for weeks on end. Little wonder while we were at sea he and Boag burned up time on the sat phone as they discussed the wider issues of the project that we had been insulated from – and had insulated ourselves from. For the rest of us, our roles had little bearing on ‘the big picture’ and knowing this we simply immersed ourselves in being focused on the job at hand, exclusively while at sea and barely leaving time for personal lives ashore.

In spite of the rigours of his role and inexperience offshore, Walker learnt the priorities quickly. As legendary Whitbread race skippers went, the old-school mantra of ‘follow-me-or-fuck-off’ was successfully championed by Lawrie Smith and Grant Dalton decades earlier. Although both led from the front, able in almost every role on board, the traditional top-down hierarchical command structure has since given way to flatter management that gathers good sailors with specific expertise on board increasingly complex racing boats. Walker’s coordination style was also to get stuck in himself, to be involved in all aspects of the project and was as demanding of himself as he was of everyone else. There would be no faulting him on the energy and commitment he put into the campaign and he was motivated most by excellence, both in himself and his team. To be skipper and learn all the functions of deck work was hard but mental toughness plus his considerable work rate, on top of his load of responsibilities, quickly overcame this. He confided in a small group of people, notably Neal ‘Nelly’ McDonald to whom he listened carefully, though the advice was not always heeded in the early stages of the project as Walker’s hands were tied by the issues we were not aware of. Neither he nor Boag could share the full picture of the delicate background negotiations as sponsors were signed up, even halfway into the race.

A few years before, Walker was involved the Italian +39 America’s Cup team so he was no stranger to big-boat campaigns and from the outset of the Green Dragon project, before the crew was assembled, he was immersed in budgets and doing the accounts. But that was a normal function of a start-up when they did not have money so all management activities were very centralised until gradually team members were employed. So he brought his neighbour Phil Allen onto the team who became the saviour of many logistical nightmares.

As well, around this time, the lack of a professional sailing culture in Ireland became apparent. Stepping from the hugely resourced Solent area around Southampton and the Isle of Wight not just to Ireland but to Galway and the west of Ireland was a culture shock. In the Solent area where the ‘Cowes mafia’ moniker holds some truth, the nebulous established network of professional sailing that puts friendship and loyalty firmly alongside skill was plainly absent across the pond. Putting together a project on this scale demands reliance on people you know and trust but without an established professional scene in Ireland, problems could quickly build up.

On top of the professional-level services gap in Ireland and the lack of high-end technical resources, another disparity existed between what the syndicate thought the team needed and what Walker and Boag knew was required, at least in the early stages of planning. The twenty years from the previous Irish entry in this race, NCB Ireland in the 1989–1990 Whitbread Round-the-World Race, to the present era was evident in many ways. And therein lay a problem that faced Walker and Boag.

As so many years had elapsed since a sailing project on this scale was undertaken in Ireland, the people involved had moved on, taking their knowledge and experience with them, leaving the marginal interest and more than a little cynicism that followed the outcome of that earlier race. In those days, to keep people happy, simply completing the course, safely and without serious injury, flying the Irish flag around the world in an era that pre-dated Riverdance just was not enough; only outright victory would do, it seemed.

Undaunted by this backdrop, almost twenty years later the syndicate behind the Green Dragon committed to Walker and Boag that a new boat would be designed and built, a campaign would be funded and, separately, the city of Galway would host a stopover in the closing stages of the 2008–2009 Volvo Ocean Race.

We did not appreciate it at the time but a massive leap of faith had been taken to begin building Green Dragon and the catalyst for this was the drive of the project’s founders: Eamon Conneely, John Killeen and Enda O’Coineen, all three passionate about sailing and Galway in equal measure.

On one of his first visits to Ireland, Walker was given a copy of Tim Pat Coogan’s book Ireland in the 20th Century. After his introduction with the long and tortuous history between Ireland and Britain, Walker’s conclusion was: ‘we really fucked you guys over.’ But he continued as he began, the British skipper of an Irish boat that would fly a tricolour around the world.

‘This is an Irish-International team,’ both Walker and Boag said at the start and that was good enough as far as we were concerned. It was an ethos that held true from beginning to end. There would be no compromising on people or materials. Where possible, Irish sailors and support crew would be employed but only if their skills fitted the requirements as it was intended to showcase Ireland in a top-class campaign.

After returning from winning the Barcelona World Race with Jean-Pierre Dick, I found the prospect of competing as a watch leader on the first Irish entry for the Volvo Ocean Race immediately compelling and was reassured as other top Irish sailors were also being brought on board.

Justin Slattery, an old sailing mate from setting a round-the-world record on the giant catamaran Cheyenne was also an early recruit. Decades earlier, both of us had encountered NCB Ireland which had inspired us then. Reared in County Wexford but with his early sailing experience being in Cork, where he was born, Slattery had been the bowman for Mike Sanderson’s winning ABN AMRO team in the previous Volvo Race and brought valuable insights from that campaign. Like me, he had also been waiting for a chance to sail for Ireland in a major ocean race and he brought an edge to the crew panel with his experience plus sheer, gritty determination, especially when under pressure such as sail changes in rough seas when the job calls for perseverance regardless of the conditions.

Ian ‘Soapy’ Moore’s track record as an Irish navigator on the professional circuits for America’s Cup teams as well as major offshore and long-distance races made him an ideal choice and a coup for the project in this critical role on board. He was a long-standing navigator with Walker and had sailed as navigator with Team Illbruck, the 2001–2002 Volvo Ocean Race winning 60-footer. And, being based on the Isle of Wight, he was already well known to many of the team members. His job on board was to soak up information both before the race and during it, to crunch numbers and run tactical software while all or most of the time cooped up in a dark and stuffy corner below decks, surrounded by electronic instruments. It was about as far removed from the popular image of yachting – sipping iced drinks on a palatial vessel in the company of glamorous people. And if ever he did find himself with spare time, there was plenty for him to do on deck or when needed if drama took over.

Also recruited were Dubliners Johnny Mordaunt and Johnny Smullen who would become the heart and soul of our shore team with their decades of experience in project management. James ‘Jimbo’ Carroll was the third Dub on the shore team and was the ‘BC’ or boat captain from the outset and we now had a distinctly Irish backbone to the team.

For all of us throughout our careers comprising years of competing on various teams for other countries, or for private individuals or sometimes multinational corporations the size of Ireland, such campaigns always left us longing for a chance that one day we might see the green, white and orange flying from our own Irish entry in a transglobal ocean race.

After we signed on together, both Slattery and I were often asked whether we would not have preferred the skipper’s role. Surely an Irish entry demanded an Irish skipper? The question missed the point completely. It was not and never is about who gets to be the boss. It’s about getting the job done and Walker was the right man for that job. Sea law requires a ‘person-in-charge’ to be ultimately responsible and our media and popular following also look to an individual as a figurehead. Yet, in a team situation, having an effective skipper is just one element of a result and taking a part share in that performance remains at the core of what drives each member of the crew. Being part of that was everything Slattery, Moore and I could have asked for when we signed up. That, plus lifting the trophy as overall winners, of course.

An economic build price from a branch of the Australian McConaghys boatbuilders in China was the beginning of the Sino-Irish link and when sponsorship from Shandong Lingong Construction Machinery linked to the Volvo corporation followed, Green Dragon took her name. Although an option to buy the winning boat from the last race existed, management knew that both crew and funding might not be available had they pursued this route.

We always knew it was going to be tight, launching a new design barely five months before the start. But the many positives and reassurances from team management that everything was on track left us to concentrate on boat and team preparations in the early summer of 2008. With only five months to go before the start of the race in which time we had to test sails, practise with the boat and train crew, our brand-new boat arrived on the deck of a ship after a five-week voyage. As the Volvo Open 70-footer was craned onto her dockside cradle in Portsmouth, the crate containing her underwater appendages was opened. Inside, the contents comprised the weighty, torpedo-like bulb that attaches to a long keel fin. This in turn attaches under the hull to the hydraulic rams inside the boat’s hull that swing the whole arrangement to counterbalance the force of the rig and sails. This system is designed optimally to deliver the awesome speeds of these boats, yet as we pulled the last of the packing away, Slattery – who had won the previous Volvo Race on the first generation of these boats and already had a well-honed instinct for speed ingredients – needed to verify the keel weight, as both he and McDonald had warned of its importance to our performance. If it was underweight it would affect the overall ability of the boat to reach its best speeds.

It was a big day when boat and keel were joined together. All the elements had been built in different parts of the world – New Zealand, China, US and Italy – and all needed to fit perfectly and first time. Slattery and crew member Phil Harmer called over to the mobile-crane driver who was lifting the keel fin and bulb out of their packing cases. From the load sensors on the crane, he confirmed the weight. As the measurer took notes of the readings, he headed off to the office without telling anyone. Slattery’s original concern was that in their enthusiasm at a new facility, the boatyard in China might have ‘added in’ construction materials and inadvertently pushed the weight of the boat over the optimum target. He had already wondered at the amount of internal structure that the previous race winner had not had – or needed. This latest generation boat should have been an evolution of this but instead appeared heavier. This concern was now added to a bigger issue. With a rule limit of 7.4 tonnes for the overall keel fin and bulb weight, the results of the weigh-in highlighted and made public for the all the team to see an ultimate flaw: the design specifications had placed some 600 kg in the fin, leaving the bulb light by over a half a ton. Keels, especially canting keels, generate the ‘righting moment’ that creates the power and speed potential of a sail boat. To be on target weight was crucial.

On that day, months before, when Green Dragon had not yet been sailed, Slattery returned home and apologised to his wife in advance for the frustration that inevitably lay ahead. As one of the best bowmen around, he carried a lot of credibility and, typically, he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind and highlight our potential for underperformance. Our boat would struggle to match the other new builds in the fleet. Perhaps on the short in-port race courses the difference of half a knot in boat speed caused by our lack of power might not matter so much. But over the course of several days or even weeks, the difference would be massive and could translate into Green Dragon finishing days behind faster boats.

Yet Slattery remained completely committed to the project, purely because it was an Irish team and anyone with guts would not quit easily. We all felt the same; so too did McDonald, even though he had no Irish connection; we all decided to stick with the programme. Offers from other teams were made to some of us in the months leading up to the start but the programme was already up and running and our Irish team came first.

The Team

If an underweight keel was Green Dragon’s Achilles’ heel, it was probably about as significant a problem that could have existed short perhaps, of the boat itself falling apart. But the heart of the issue went beyond the design of the appendage and all the way to the roots of the project, something that was far away from the minds of the sailing and shore crew.

In the months following her arrival into Portsmouth in June 2008, the issue of Green Dragon’s weight bubbled away in the background. It was not too late to remedy the situation and regain a competitive edge. A redesign of the keel and work on the hull to rebalance the all-up weight of Green Dragon could be managed within the remaining time before the start of the race in mid-October, or at worst we could receive a new keel fin in Cape Town. Twenty years previously, the NCB Ireland entry had cost IR£4 million to campaign. Fast forward to 2007 and the cost of building a state-of-the-art racing yacht stood at €4 million alone, without all the other costs of wages, expenses, sails, shore bases and new technologies that would require at least another €10 million to just scrape by with. But Walker’s reality as skipper was a world removed from that of watch leader and the rest of the sailing team. What he knew and we did not was that the project simply did not have the financial cushion or the time to throw a handbrake turn into the programme and address the keel issue.

Together with Boag, Walker strategically brought forty people under the umbrella of the campaign, comprising all the elements of our racing team: experienced sailors, talented newcomers, technical expertise, logistics and applied resources.

Neal McDonald, arguably one of the best offshore sailors in the world, had competed in six round-the-world races including two as skipper in this event. We had raced together on a record circumnavigation attempt with Ellen MacArthur on Kingfisher B&Q in 2003. McDonald could be relied upon to take the wheel and steer accurately and fast in even the most demanding sea state for an entire watch without fatigue. His presence alone brought an air of gravitas and reassurance to the crew panel that