Sailing: Damian Foxall, co-skipper with Jean-Pierre Dick on Paprec-Virbac in the non-stop Barcelona World Race, expects to arrive at the finish tonight (around 9pm Irish time) to record a famous victory.

That's it - we've done it! Not won the race mind, just done the circumnavigation past the three Capes (Good Hope, Leuwin and Horn) on the classic route around the planet. We're almost home and the waves of a stormy passage past Gibraltar have been replaced by waves of expectation as we come to terms with what lies just ahead in Barcelona.

Less than 300 miles to go, light airs the whole way - and a good thing, too.

But more of that shortly.

In truth, JP and I are breathing a huge sigh of relief. Gulping it down in fact, and yet we're still not there yet so we're crossing everything - fingers, toes the lot! The last week has seen painfully slow progress as we battled against headwinds. In fact, we were obliged to sail too far north, as far up as the Azores in order to keep moving and not get becalmed in the centre of a high-pressure system over the Canaries.

And all the time, Alex (Thompson) and Capey (Andrew) on Hugo Boss were slowly reeling us in, clipping off the DTL (distance to leader) thanks to a better wind angle that gave them faster reaching conditions compared to our upwind slog.

Then we finally turned east, in past the Algarve coast, and as we closed on Gibraltar and the gateway to the Mediterranean, the wind started to blow and blow until we had a full gale on our hands and nasty, short, steep waves piling out into the Atlantic making our path ahead torturous.

I've sailed in this part of the world many times and never have I seen it this bad: truck loads of wind, and consistently so for days. Even after we passed Gib and the scoring-gate, it continued, so we ducked in towards the Spanish coast where we tacked along in relative shelter until we passed the worst of the gale.

In fact, since Gibraltar, we've tacked 32 times! In a fully-crewed boat or a dinghy, this is normally a pretty simple, "ready-about, lee-ho" and all that.

Racing an Open 60-footer two-handed is somewhat different. Each tack, where the heading of the boat changes from one side of the wind to the other, takes us about 30 minutes by the time we shift sails and get the boat ready for the new course. Its exhausting multiplied by 32.

Now that the wind has eased, we've moved into deeper water and over to the coast of Algeria for our next tack up towards Ibiza in the reverse of the start three months ago in almost matching conditions.

The easier conditions meant we could be distracted by a certain rugby match on Saturday afternoon. Luc and Laurent, on our shore-team, sent us a blow-by-blow account of the game by text, and in the second half I really felt like it was in Ireland's grasp.

We're very happy to be in light winds because for the past two weeks we've been keeping quiet about an incident that nearly ended our race - and still could.

We were off Brazil, bashing through the gale-force squalls of a cold front with Hugo Boss starting to gain ground on us when there was a huge bang as the forestay, which is one of the key supports for our mast, broke just above deck level when six tonnes of load became too much for the tired rig.

The headsail we had up on the forestay started flailing around in the gusts and, with the heavy furling drum at the bottom, became like a medieval mace as it bashed around, tearing lumps out of the sails and banging into the mast that was thankfully still standing - just - thanks to the baby-stay.

JP was on the helm and quickly spun the boat around so we were sailing downwind, which took the pressure off the rig, and yelled for me to come on deck.

It was treacherous. The sail was in bits and unusable but still up and threatened to knock me overboard. It took hours, but eventually we were able to jury-rig the mast and forestay, which is the way it is today, lashed down but taking terrific punishment as we crash off wave after wave.

Then, 12 hours later, we had the problem with our ballast scoop that required JP to take a trip overboard for repairs. Other than that, we have a fitting on our mainsail that's coming loose but manageable. We just need the rig to stay up for another 300 miles.

But that's it, the hardest bit is over now. All our pre-race plans and preparations are coming to fruition. We've tried to anticipate as many eventualities as possible, even down to keeping personal areas within our tiny, communal living-space on Paprec Virbac.

Whatever happens on Monday night, JP and I will be lifelong friends. We have come so far, realised an ambition to race around the world against the odds and come home safely.

We're now, finally, starting to feel proud. Proud to be leading this race, with the Irish and French flags flying together, on the last day at sea before we meet our families and friends again in Barcelona.

Now, where's that razor and shaving-cream?