Damien Guillou and Pat Lawless have both reached the first checkpoint of the 2026 Golden Globe Race. Guillou anchored off Marina Rubicón at 12:15 local time on 16 September, gave his 20-minute film-drop interview, then spent the best part of an hour up his own mast replacing a sheave in the masthead spinnaker block before heading straight back out to sea. Under GGR rules he can anchor and fix his own boat unaided, he just can't bring in outside help to do it, and he didn't need to. Lawless followed seven hours later, easing Silvermines Hydro through under one reef with the race's rigid inflatable running alongside for his own interview, before continuing south.
Golden Globe Race 2026: distance sailed
Tracker snapshots, start to Day 11
Source: Golden Globe Race live tracker (Yellow Brick)
Both men had a previous GGR end in 2022 that neither has said much about until now: mechanical failure took each of them out of that race before it got going. Being first and second through the opening checkpoint of this one is the kind of result that speaks for itself.
Their routes around the island split too. Guillou, on Solarem, went west; Lawless went east. Race founder Don McIntyre called Guillou's route the sharper read of the breeze at the time, though Lawless hasn't lost much for it, 149 nautical miles to Guillou's 159 in the most recent report. One detail cuts against the leaderboard: since leaving Lanzarote, Guillou has sailed more distance through the water than Lawless, 478 nautical miles to 420, meaning Lawless has taken the straighter line of the two despite trailing. It's a smaller version of the routing argument that's been deciding places further back in the fleet all week.
Andrea Lodolo's position dropped off the tracker entirely, rather than stalling in light air as her last reported mileage suggested. Race control lost her YB3 signal and was working to force a fresh position through her onboard unit as of the latest update, with her Lanzarote arrival estimated sometime between 8pm and midnight. Anyone who's been watching her numbers drop over the past day should read that as a tracking gap, not a genuine slowdown.
Further back, Guy deBoer's history with these waters has taken another turn. His Hydrovane, itself a salvaged unit borrowed from a boat being scrapped after his own new one was stolen off the beach before the race started, is giving him trouble with its mounting brackets. He's called it in, switched to his backup Windpilot, and plans to dive on the Hydrovane once he's in Lanzarote to see what can be fixed. It hasn't cost him much pace, Spirit still made 150 miles in the day at 6 knots.
Messikommer and Daniel Pinsky are sailing close enough to see each other again, 1.9 nautical miles apart at last check, the same shadowing contest that had Messikommer and Cantini within half a mile of each other earlier in the week. Henry Wootton has turned a rough opening week into one of the fastest boats on the water, and his last safety call, in which he spoke honestly about the emotional weight of the race's first days, has drawn real attention.
The breeze holds for most of the fleet through the 18th and 19th, strong enough to keep boats moving well, before it's forecast to collapse entirely by the 20th. Whoever hasn't reached the Canaries by then may be waiting a while to get there.
