DeBoer and race management at odds as storm-force gusts confirmed through the fleet

Guy deBoer's fight to get back in the Golden Globe Race has turned into something more pointed than a paperwork delay. Race founder Don McIntyre was uncharacteristically guarded on today's call, saying only that deBoer "made a public statement" about the surveyor process that doesn't match his own account, he says he was personally present when the surveyor was called in. What isn't in dispute is the requirement itself: no repair work starts without a full surveyor's report covering every chain plate and the hull repair, plus an approved schedule signed off before deBoer touches the boat again. Miss that, McIntyre said, and there's no green card, no Chichester Class, nothing. He hasn't heard from deBoer officially in several days, despite putting all of it to him in writing. "Watch this space," was as far as McIntyre would go. We don't have deBoer's side of it, and until we do, that's where this one sits.

Selim Yalçin's situation is just as unresolved, if less pointed. Asked directly for an update, McIntyre's answer was simple: "I don't know, we haven't heard." Both he and deBoer remain fully stationary on the tracker, a combined 24 hours-plus without a mile gained between them, and McIntyre himself grouped their two situations together as "a separate story for later." Neither man's race is confirmed to be continuing, and neither is confirmed to be over.

Out on the water, Tropical Storm Gonzalo has delivered exactly what its name promised. Confirmed gust readings from the fleet's latest report put Isa Rosli in 49 knots, Gunnar Christensen in 45, and Ertan Beskardes, Matt Woodside and Louis Kerdelhué all in the high 30s. That's not a forecast anymore, it's what actually hit the boats, and the wind chart backs it up: the fleet's whole position near Cape Verde sits inside a band of genuine storm-force colour on the overlay. A larger, more intense system is visible further out in open ocean, but it's well clear of the fleet for now.

Kerdelhué and Rosli have turned 10th and 11th place into their own private contest, swapping the spot four times in three days while sailing barely 16 nautical miles apart. It's the kind of margin that reads like nothing on a leaderboard and everything on the water.

At the front, the race has become a historical one. This year's fleet is running two places ahead of Jean-Luc Van Den Heede's winning 2018 pace, and thirteen ahead of Kirsten Neuschäfer's 2022 pace, at the same point in the race. Damien Guillou remains clear at the front, with Pat Lawless holding station in second and Andrea Lodolo third, still just ahead of Messikommer in a battle for third that shows no sign of settling.

McIntyre explained how this stat actually works, and it's simpler than it looks: just two GPS positions, run through a free international weather model, since the boats aren't carrying wind instruments and the site has no way to know what breeze they actually felt. It's an estimate dressed up as data, but a genuinely useful one for tracking the shape of the race against the two editions that came before it.