deBoer faces total elimination as Guillou plots a rare shortcut through the Doldrums

Guy deBoer's race has gone from a repair job to a question of whether he has a race left at all. Race founder Don McIntyre laid out the stakes plainly on today's tracker call: alongside the chain plate concern that stopped him in the first place, the survey has now turned up potentially serious problems in an existing hull repair, work done before this race started, not damage from it. The protocol from here is strict. A full survey has to happen before any work begins. A surveyor oversees and approves every repair, then personally signs off on both hull and rig. Miss any part of that, McIntyre said, and deBoer isn't just delayed, he's out of the Golden Globe entirely, not even eligible for the non-competitive Chichester Class. "It would be quite a story," he added, if deBoer makes it back at all.

Andrea Lodolo's tracker trouble finally has an explanation, and it's a piece of hardware, not something more complicated. A wave took out her Starlink antenna, and she's been struggling to bring the spare online, which has cut her off from the GGR's live broadcast while support ashore works the problem. Her position tracking runs on a separate system and hasn't been affected the same way, though McIntyre noted her updates have still been running behind, a second, smaller issue that GGR's tracking provider is watching alongside her.

At the front, Damien Guillou is doing something the raw numbers don't quite show. His reported 117-mile day looks modest next to recent form, but it's a deliberate move off the direct line south, aimed at a narrow corridor through the Doldrums that could let him keep moving through a stretch of ocean usually defined by dead calms. Pat Lawless held a more direct course, 138 miles at 5.7 knots, and remains firmly in touch. McIntyre didn't hedge on why the gap hasn't closed: Guillou's preparation, sail choice and Rustler 36 have simply come together this campaign. He had just as much to say about Lawless's Saga 36, calling it a genuinely quick boat in its own right.

Further back, a weather advisory sent out overnight is only slowly getting through. Guido Cantini rang the shore team directly to confirm the safety picture and has held a southwesterly heading on their advice. Etienne Messikommer was still sailing east of south at the time of the call, the message hadn't reached him yet, and McIntyre expects that to change once it does, either through the automatic alarm system or his next satellite text check. Louis Kerdelhué has all but stalled, down to 1.5 knots after briefly turning southwest himself, a case of running out of wind rather than running into too much of it. Helga Marie "Mara" Løvenskiold Kveseth has been doing some of the race organisers' work for them, walking fellow skippers through the weather picture over the radio and successfully deploying a scientific buoy on instruction from the shore team, a real contribution to the wider forecasting effort, well beyond her own race.

Selim Yalçin remains stuck in Cádiz with no fresh word. McIntyre's own estimate puts him three to four more days from departure, and the gap to the fleet will only keep growing while he waits.

The depression building southeast of Cape Verde is still genuinely uncertain. Early numbers on the tracker looked alarming, but they weren't confirmed across the fleet, and the latest model run has scaled the threat back to gusts of 40 to 42 knots rather than the worse figures floated earlier. The advice to move southwest still stands for most of the middle fleet, even for those who haven't received it yet.

One more thing worth watching: McIntyre teased a major announcement due this Saturday, calling it something no other sailing event has attempted. No details so far, but it's clearly being built up as significant.