Damien Guillou leads the Golden Globe Race by 911 nautical miles from Ertan Beskardes at the 16:00 UTC tracker update on Sunday 8 November 2026, Day 64 of the race. Guillou's Solarem has 18,345 miles to go and covered 153 miles in 24 hours, while Miss Beagle managed 62. The best run of the fleet belonged to Etienne Messikommer, whose Bernard made 181 miles as he closed on the Cape of Good Hope, which he expects to pass around Wednesday or Thursday. Guillou's advantage has grown by another 41 miles since our previous report.
Here is how each skipper's distance sailed has built since Les Sables d'Olonne:
Golden Globe Race 2026: distance sailed
Tracker snapshots, start to Day 64
Source: Golden Globe Race live tracker (Yellow Brick)
Who is leading the Golden Globe Race?
Gaps here are measured in miles still to sail. Guillou is first, Beskardes second with 19,256 miles to go, and Messikommer third with 19,642, which is 386 miles behind Beskardes. Henry Wootton is fourth in Privateer on 19,700, just 58 miles behind Messikommer. Since our Day 63 snapshot the gap from first to second has grown by 41 miles, while the gap from second to third has shrunk by 61, a squeeze on third place that Beskardes will notice.
We covered Guillou's earlier brush with heavy weather in After 8,000 miles, the Southern Ocean bares its teeth.
Guy deBoer airlifted from Spirit
The race office says a Brazilian Navy helicopter from the corvette Barroso lifted Guy deBoer off Spirit on 8 November, about 870 miles east of Rio de Janeiro, and he was aboard the helicopter at 11:38 UTC. Spirit was left drifting, and the race office thanked the Brazilian rescue centre and the Navy. We reported on the emergency in Solo sailor seeks urgent rescue after fall off Brazil coast.
Why is Messikommer flying in the Golden Globe Race?
The tracker puts Bernard at 181 miles for the day, and his own recordings from Sunday show why. At 14:15 UTC the overlay had him on 8.9 knots at about 37 degrees south and 8 degrees east, and at 14:30 UTC he was still making 8.6 knots with water streaming past the deck. He reckons he is about 500 miles from the Cape of Good Hope and, if the wind holds, expects to pass south of Africa around Wednesday or Thursday. His plan, he said, is to aim for about 40 degrees south in the hope of staying clear of the worst of the Agulhas Current. A 181-mile day works out at an average of about 7.5 knots, so those 8 to 9 knot bursts on camera fit the number.
The recordings also show a skipper who likes a bit of exercise on a Sunday morning. In his case that meant fetching some rice at two or three in the morning, then shutting the companionway so a wave would not soak everything. Lunch was soup, a few little pies and some pâté. Every Sunday he draws a line on his globe, and this one made nine. He announced that he is growing a very respectable beard, and he ended one clip by noticing his camera was not plugged in, before plugging it in and declaring that it was charging at last. On an earlier day he was fighting condensation, wiping down a damp mattress with a towel and propping it on its side to dry.
Christensen goes looking for sun
Gunnar Christensen's live feed on Sunday, with the overlay reading 17:05 UTC, found him trying to coax enough power from his charging system to keep broadcasting. His Pompoen is sailing under a triple-reef main and storm jib after Friday night's blow, and his hydro generator is only holding the battery near 12.6 volts rather than lifting it. He says he needs a solid day of sun and about 13.4 volts to run a full four-hour evening feed, so he wedged a 100 watt solar panel onto a new mount on deck, planned to wire in two 50 watt panels as well, and cut the broadcast short to save power. He said one panel had already been washed away in a tropical storm earlier in the race and joked that the gear a friend had warned would be wiped out was still hanging in there.
He counted five storms since the start, one named tropical system and four strong gales, and asked, only half joking, whether the wind could manage a happy Sunday. He could do with a little less friskiness from the breeze, he said, and a sky of low grey scud was hardly "mermaids and bikinis". The galley was in better shape: a pancake breakfast and a tikka chicken lunch, and a rest day spent with a copy of The Economist. He is about 800 miles from Cape Town, has not yet rounded a great cape, and hopes to see an albatross as the Roaring Forties near. His tracker line puts him 11th on 20,339 miles to go, 34 miles ahead of Matt Woodside on the last position the tracker holds.
Wootton, Kveseth and Pinsky bunch up for fourth
Wootton's 178 miles in Privateer were second only to Messikommer, and they stretched his margin over Mara Kveseth in Showgirl from 16 miles to 44. Daniel Pinsky's Exodus made 154 and sits 39 miles behind Kveseth. Earlier this week one mile split Wootton and Kveseth, as we reported in fourth place comes down to one mile, so the gap has opened quickly.
Across the fleet
Guido Cantini made 146 miles in Hannah of Cowes, Pär Nyman 146 in Lazy Otter, Isa Rosli 148 in Olleanna, and Andrea Lodolo's BiBi 59. The race office has confirmed that Lodolo's race is over and that he is heading for Cape Town, though the tracker still lists him as racing. Woodside's Tipi Haere has a stale position on the public tracker, so his figures are not reliable.
What to watch in the Golden Globe Race this week
Our rough read of the PredictWind forecast for the seas south of Africa shows the main bunch sitting on the edge of a band of light air, with 30 to 40 knots just to the south. On Tuesday and Wednesday the band drifts east while the strongest westerlies stay over the southern flank. The two models we compare, PredictWind's own and GFS, disagree on how patchy the light air is, with GFS showing pockets under 10 knots that the other model smooths out. By Thursday 12 November both models ease the wind to 10 to 20 knots over most of that area.
This is our own reading for readers; entrants are not allowed weather routing, so every call on sail and reefing stays with the skipper on deck. Messikommer has found some speed, Beskardes needs wind, and Wootton has two boats chasing his fourth place.
Follow the whole race on our dedicated Golden Globe Race 2026 page.
