The final day

With only about 250 miles to go Finish is getting close for David and his (R)evoluiton. If he can still catch the Monaco Radio emmissions, he knows about his advantage and also that he can drop the pressure on him and his boat for a notch. In this case the extraordinary adventure on which he embarked by selling everything and betting all he had on the concept, we might quickly start considering normal and logical, has high probability to end with a happiest end of all. If he cannot - which is from my experience quite likely - he is still pushing hard and the stress will start to rise with the approach to the finish.
The aspect of being comunicationaly blind on a mini is something unique in the ocean races. It brings interesting component of not knowing where is your competition and consequently pushing you to fight to the finish. No tactical covering or saving your resurses. You give what you have and the count the masts allready docked in the finish marina while you are towed in to see which place you got.
Wind looks to be very comfortable at the moment which means also less problems for sailors infected bottoms and sore eyes. Uniluminated fishing boats and floating trash still reamins a threat for all of the fleet and convection clouds sometimes give you a welcome shower.
There is a lot of weather activity in the south atlantic but it looks like it will not affect the race course much - only to the extend that the trades are a bit weaker than normaly. Salvador area might be touched by te southerlies in a few days which might push the deficites of the second group even a bit further.
But in any case (again save the technical problems or colision with UFO - unindentified floating object) the general rankings podioum will look like the ranking od second leg which is quite common. And if fourth place is also firmly in the hand of Antoine (800) it will be an interesting fight for the places from 5 forward. Group of David (679), Guillaume (667) and Etienne (802) will shortly join the group of Lucas (509) Joerg (753) and Lucas) after they line up for final approach. In this case firs leg results will play a major role in final rankings.
Also interesting fact is that Lucas on the 2004 Manuard (509) is currently ahead of Joerg who rented the same boat for the 2008 season and then build a new one for the 2009 Transat.