Well, the situation was already pretty exciting, but it is now a building crescendo leading up to possibly the most exciting leg finish to date. Hence the fact that David is beavering away on deck and unable to fill you in on events today.
Up until now we were steadily trying to work our way up from fifth towards the podium, with a clear order of yachts to be overtaken, beginning with a consolidation of our sporadic and marginal lead over BG SPIRIT, followed by Me to You, Imagine It. Done and - if something happened to reduce their 30-mile lead - Team Stelmar. Now, all of these yachts, bar Team Stelmar, are pretty much level. It is hard to tell who is actually in front - and Team Stelmar themselves are less than ten miles away. I have a feeling that the last 24 hours are going to exhausting stuff.
We do have a list of priorities, though. Obviously the most important thing is to come ahead of BG SPIRIT, who are currently three points in front of us in the overall race. If we manage to overtake them, the more places between us the better. And it is the same with Spirit of Sark. Not only do we gain one more point for every place, but that puts one more point between ourselves and one of our two main adversaries; an important detail when it comes to the final leg.
Beyond a small patch of Biscay bubbling with literally hundreds of leaping dolphins, we could see Imagine It. Done. and Me To You when I headed for bed six hours ago - now, no doubt, there are probably even more yellow sails in view. There are 194 miles to go and the wind has not, as predicted, died, but has kept powering us straight to the mark, which means that we should arrive around lunchtime tomorrow. If there are any hold-ups, this could prove very frustrating. The port is tidal and involves a huge lock gate - tomorrow this opens between 1300 and 1530 GMT - miss it and we could have to spend an agonising ten hours outside it waiting for our beer!
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