Damien Guillou leads the Golden Globe Race 2026 by 1,276 miles at the 20:00 UTC tracker update on Saturday 14 November (Day 70). His Solarem has 17,168 miles to go after a 144-mile run through heavy weather. Ertan Beskardes remains second aboard Miss Beagle on 18,444 miles to go, and the lead has grown by nine miles since the 16:00 UTC update on Friday. The next tracker update is due at 00:00 UTC, with the worst of the weather still to pass the leader.
Who is leading the Golden Globe Race?
Here is the tracker order at 20:00 UTC on 14 November, with nautical miles to go and the distance each boat covered in the previous 24 hours. Andrea Lodolo is left out because his position was recently flagged out of date and we cannot confirm his figures.
1. Damien Guillou, Solarem: 17,168 miles to go, 144 miles in 24 hours, the best run of the day
2. Ertan Beskardes, Miss Beagle: 18,444 to go, 140 miles
3. Henry Wootton, Privateer: 18,791 to go, 78 miles
4. Etienne Messikommer, Bernard: 18,855 to go, 38 miles
5. Daniel Pinsky, Exodus: 18,864 to go, 108 miles
6. Guido Cantini, Hannah of Cowes: 19,151 to go, 94 miles
7. Pär Nyman, Lazy Otter: 19,265 to go, 80 miles
8. Isa Rosli, Olleanna: 19,625 to go, 60 miles
9. Gunnar Christensen, Pompoen: 19,651 to go, 122 miles
10. Matt Woodside, Tipi Haere: 19,798 to go, 125 miles
Here is how far each skipper has sailed since the start:
Golden Globe Race 2026: distance sailed
Tracker snapshots, start to Day 70
Source: Golden Globe Race live tracker (Yellow Brick)
What happened to Beskardes in the storm?
A wave knocked Miss Beagle down in the storm that has been sweeping across the leaders, the race office reported, and damaged the companionway. The washboards were forced out but stayed on their retaining lines, and the next wave came inside. Beskardes' own recordings from that stretch tell it as it happened. The washboard channels could no longer hold the boards, there was water everywhere, and he needed a screwdriver and a calm moment between waves. He found the screwdriver, fixed a piece of wood across the opening and made a temporary repair. The race office says the Starlink went over the side as well and was recovered.
It was not tidy afterwards. In one recording he cannot find his glasses because everything in the boat has moved, so he tries to read a satellite message on the YB3 tracker through his sunglasses instead. In another he decides cooking is not worth the bother in this weather, and settles for biscuits, hazelnuts and marshmallows. He signs that one off with a cheerful "Opa!".
Despite the knockdown and the repairs, Miss Beagle recorded 140 miles in the 24 hours to this update, only four fewer than the leader, and is 347 miles clear of Privateer in third. The race office expected conditions to ease for Beskardes on Saturday afternoon, with a more secure repair to follow.
How rough is it for the leader?
Very. The race office put the peak gusts around Solarem at about 60 knots, with a confused sea building to 8 metres or more, and expects the hard going to last about another 36 hours before it improves early on Monday. Race office footage from Solarem showed a heaving sea and boat speeds past 18 knots on the waves. Guillou still made 144 miles, the best in the fleet, and the gap to second grew by nine miles. For a closer look at the weather that has hit this fleet before, see After 8,000 miles, the Southern Ocean bares its teeth.
Why did Messikommer's run drop to 38 miles?
Mostly a current. The race office says Bernard has had enough wind for 4 to 5 knots through the water but has been fighting a strong adverse current that cut his progress over the ground to a fraction of that. A 38-mile run is the shortest in the fleet. Messikommer was only 16 miles behind Privateer at the update on Friday and is now about 65 behind, after the race office's morning figures had the gap stretched to about 90 miles. Wootton, by contrast, has been on a route clear of the adverse current.
Behind him, Exodus is about nine miles back after Pinsky made 108 miles to his rival's 38. Our earlier pieces on Wootton edging into third and why Messikommer will not be an easy overtake show how long these boats have been trading places.
Orcas, a doubtful sextant and a one-way radio
Pinsky reports a brilliant day after a couple of tough ones, and a surprise escort: four huge orcas surfing five-metre waves behind Exodus, which he thought was wild. Wootton, meanwhile, has been all smiles and double-checking his sextant sights, because the miles he was making seemed too good to be true. A favourable current was doing the work. Cantini, heading towards the Agulhas current with some trepidation, can hear other entrants on the radio but cannot reach them, which the race office summed up neatly as being able to hear them but not touch them. Christensen, for his part, was on the live broadcast talking about life aboard Pompoen over a coffee, as you would expect from the skipper who mistook a dolphin for a penguin, and Lazy Otter is still plugging away, with the race office giving Nyman the nickname Nonstop Pär.
Where is the weather risk for the fleet?
This is our own reading of the PredictWind forecast, not routing advice, as entrants are not given weather routing under the race rules. On the tracking map below, the main pack sits in a lighter band of roughly 10 to 20 knots south of the Cape, while a broad area of 30 knots or more lies to the south-west. Further east, the leader's track ends inside a red zone on the northern side of a deep low near 954 hPa.
In the forecast models, a 30 to 40 knot band sits to the south-west of the pack on Sunday, with the pack on its lighter northern edge. By Monday there is a lull of roughly 5 to 15 knots along the pack's latitude east of the Cape. By Tuesday both models show a compact low south-east of Durban, with the American GFS stronger than the European ECMWF, so we would treat that part as uncertain. It is a rough read from a few screenshots, so use it as a guide only.
What to watch next
Watch the third-place gap between Privateer and Bernard at the next update, the fight for fourth with Exodus, and whether the leader's run holds up as the storm passes.
Follow the whole race on our dedicated Golden Globe Race 2026 page.
