Beskardes sneaks past Lodolo as Guillou fights off a closing Lawless

Damien Guillou's lead over Pat Lawless has been cut from roughly 60 nautical miles to around 50, nine days into the 2026 Golden Globe Race, after Lawless picked up 30 miles on him in a single day. Guillou managed just 80 miles at 3.2 knots, his slowest day yet, and spent much of it hand-steering Solarem under spinnaker rather than trusting the wind vane, which struggles to hold a fast line downwind when the apparent wind keeps shifting under a chute. Lawless, sailing Silvermines Hydro at 3.9 knots, has been closing that gap for days now, and this was his biggest single jump yet.

The battle we've been tracking between Lodolo and Beskardes resolved itself late, and against the run of the day. As of the written report, Andrea Lodolo still held third comfortably, 113 miles at 6.1 knots against Ertan Beskardes's 108 miles at 5.1. By the time the tracker updated at midnight, Beskardes had slipped ahead by two nautical miles on distance to finish, the payoff of a routing edge he's held for days, sailing a shorter course than Lodolo's BiBi since the start, rather than anything that happened in this one day's sailing.

Louis Kerdelhué is having his best stretch of the race. His call to push further offshore in search of wind is paying off, 127 miles at 6.5 knots aboard IE Charge, the best number in the fleet outside the two leaders. Etienne Messikommer, sailing Bernard, is matching that form a different way, Don McIntyre singled him out on the live tracker for an unusually clean, direct line with almost no wasted heading changes, good for 121 miles.

Behind them, the fleet is packed tight. Guy deBoer, Guido Cantini and Daniel Pinsky are all within a few miles of each other and jostling for position, while Henry Wootton is closing on Helga Marie "Mara" Løvenskiold Kveseth, ten miles up on her over the same 24 hours. Isa Rosli has turned west, apparently hunting a better angle into the building breeze, and Gunnar Christensen continues steady progress in the same group.

At the back, the chase between Selim Yalçin and Pär Nyman has flipped again. Nyman, who had closed to within three miles of Yalçin a few days ago, ran into a wind shadow off Cape Finisterre and managed only 32 miles, while Yalçin pulled 76 and moved back in front.

A low-pressure system is compressing the high behind this breeze, and winds of 30 to 32 knots are due to spread south through the fleet over the next two days, the boats further back should feel it first. Guillou still has the shortest run left, around 143 nautical miles to Marina Rubicón, and could make a daylight arrival tomorrow if the wind cooperates. Lawless, close enough now to matter, may not be far behind him.