Damien Guillou has barely dried out from the first South Atlantic gale and the next is already on its way. The Golden Globe Race leader, 20,003 nautical miles from the finish at Les Sables d'Olonne, is forecast to meet sustained winds of about 40 knots, gusting towards 60, from late yesterday (27 October 2026) UTC into this morning, with seas of five to seven metres. It seems he has little room to dodge the coming system.
His lead over second-placed Ertan Beskardes stands at 577 miles.
Golden Globe Race 2026: distance sailed
Tracker snapshots, start to Day 51
Source: Golden Globe Race live tracker (Yellow Brick)
The first gale is behind him
Guillou described the first blow to viewers yesterday, with Solarem running east near 40 degrees south. With no wind instruments onboard his number is a guess; well over 40 knots, probably closer to 50. It arrived in the dark. He rode it out under the storm jib alone and the boat came through without trouble.
At the height of the wind he could not see the waves. It was only when the wind eased and swung that the sea turned ugly, and Solarem struggled to fall off the crests. The cockpit filled completely more than once. A little water is finding its way into the hull from somewhere he is yet to trace, and while the saloon stayed dry the whole boat is damp. By afternoon the air had almost gone, leaving a big swell to slat the sails. A patch of sun let him open the hatch and air the cabin, which sat at 14 degrees.
His track has looked strange for days, and he explained why. Race management has steered him around one low after another, south, then north, then south again, and each swerve has cost him ground. He wants the Cape of Good Hope behind him so he can commit to heading east. For tonight he left the storm jib hoisted, packed his bunk with bags so he would stop sliding around, and called the spell before the wind the calm before the storm. He also reported a first clear HF chat with Etienne Messikommer, and understood from it that most of the fleet had taken a beating.
A new system is now expected to track further west than first thought, so the line that promised to keep him clear of its worst winds may not do it. Swell from the first low is still running, which leaves almost no recovery time before the front. Race management is working through the updated forecast with his team.
Beskardes fights for every mile
Ertan Beskardes holds second in Miss Beagle, 20,580 miles from the finish, and he made 112 of them on Tuesday. The figure hides a miserable day. On his lunchtime live he said he had put the spinnaker pole up for the third time that morning, because the wind would not sit still. He would settle on 140 or 150 degrees on the compass, and ten minutes later be reaching at 90. Down came the pole and out came the genoa. Fifteen minutes on, he was wing and wing again. He likened it to city traffic, stop, go, stop, go, and said there had not been an easy mile all day.
He wants to hold 120 to 130 degrees towards a waypoint he has drawn near 44 or 45 degrees south. By his dead reckoning he sits at about 30 degrees south, 10 degrees west, roughly 600 miles from the Greenwich meridian, and he expects that to take a week to ten days. Each evening he copies the Cape Town Radio bulletin, which names area after area expecting over 50 knots. His plan is to keep far enough from the centre that he gets 30 knots at most, and to reef when the wind arrives.
Life aboard is more cheerful than the sailing. He had a mug of tea and a biscuit on camera and promised himself a shower once the live finished, his first in days. A Dundee fruitcake that came aboard at Les Sables d'Olonne, baked on 8 August with fruit soaked in amaretto for 22 days, is down to its last slice. A bag in a locker had started growing something, and a fly emerged from the same corner. The lithium battery sagged to 12.7 volts after too many headlamps went on charge, so he spent the day nursing it back with a spare solar panel.
Tuesday afternoon went on a topping lift. The old line, the one that holds the boom up, had spent eight years outdoors and looked passable, but the inside was nearly gone. He reckoned it would have parted within weeks. Losing it at sea would have been a nuisance he could not easily fix. He had 40 metres of spare rope aboard, used part of it, and finished off the end with a lighter. He did the work in a harness.
Kveseth teaches herself French
Mara Kveseth is fourth in Showgirl, 20,999 miles from the finish, though her tracker position runs a few hours behind the rest. She is working through a French dictionary one word at a time and building sentences from the list, the first being the unromantic need to wash her face. Her plan for the day: breakfast, exercise, a radio chat with other skippers, lunch, then an hour of grammar. She also lost a good while trying to work out where she had heard the name Sir Mix-a-Lot.
The weather around her is turning damp rather than dangerous. Her cushions soak overnight, so she has started taking them below. Mould is appearing on gear, which she wipes with isopropyl alcohol and leaves out, though nothing really dries now. Her fridge is a towel soaked in seawater, wrapped round the milk and left in the wind. Breakfast was an exercise in imagination: strawberries, peanut butter, dates, then brown cheese, which won. There is a cut in her staysail, small for now, and she means to close it with herringbone stitch and tape before it grows. Between jobs she keeps a Polaroid album, two or three pictures a week, and she spent one morning hunting for a water bottle that had been in its usual place all along.
She has decided to keep her Window LIVE sessions to daylight hours from now on. The race office is also looking at the schedule, which could shrink from 24 hours to about 18.
Across the fleet
The best 24-hour run on the board belonged to Henry Wootton, 172 miles in Privateer, and the daily report has him making about 7.9 knots as stronger wind arrives. Pär Nyman added 159 in Lazy Otter, Guido Cantini 147 in Hannah of Cowes and Isa Rosli 146 in Olleanna. Etienne Messikommer in Bernard, best of the field the day before, made 131 and has turned east to stay just north of the 28 degrees 30 minutes south latitude race control advised, giving up very little ground. Onboard footage shows him repeatedly trying to raise a ship about a mile away and getting no reply.
Daniel Pinsky in Exodus had the roughest passage. He called race control about 35 knots with stronger gusts. A warning had reached him too late to climb north, and he was told to run comfortably with the wind and make the best of it. He covered 102 miles. A swing from north-west to south could build a confused sea around him. Andrea Lodolo in BiBi made only 77 miles, and his tracker position was hours old because a calm had left him pointing the wrong way. He is third, 20,739 miles out and 736 behind Guillou, and race management thinks he may keep the better breeze once the next system passes.
Fourth to eighth is a tight pack of five boats within 98 miles, from Kveseth's 20,999 to Pinsky's 21,097. Gunnar Christensen made 109 in Pompoen, and Guy deBoer in Spirit is working towards Trindade at about 5.4 knots. Matt Woodside's Tipi Haere position was still stuck at midnight, so his numbers are stale. Pat Lawless is making 4.9 knots north on his return passage. Louis Kerdelhué confirmed his retirement in Recife with IE Charge.
What to watch
Guillou meets the second gale first, with few places left to go. Behind the low, a growing South Atlantic high is forecast to bring headwinds from Wednesday and then light airs, with the northern boats most exposed. By Friday 30 October some skippers could be emerging on the far side of the high, which would split the fleet again. Our last report covers how Guillou found the gap in the first storm.
Follow the whole race on our dedicated Golden Globe Race 2026 page.
