Two highs are closing on each other across the track of the Golden Globe Race leader, and Damien Guillou will be sailing between them by this time tomorrow. Pat Lawless is about a day back and will meet the same mess a little later, which may be all that keeps this from being a pure speed contest.
Golden Globe Race 2026: distance sailed
Tracker snapshots, start to Day 34
Source: Golden Globe Race live tracker (Yellow Brick)
Front of the fleet
On Day 37 Guillou's Solarem had 21,351 nautical miles to sail. Lawless, in Silvermines Hydro, was 94 miles behind on distance to finish and 108 on distance actually sailed. The tracker's route beyond Trindade has been redrawn, so the sailed figure is the one to trust. Guillou made about 152 miles on the day against Lawless's 105, a handy buffer to have in hand.
Race chairman Don McIntyre expects Guillou to get it first. Light southerly air should arrive on his beam within hours and bend him west. After that comes what McIntyre called a collision zone, and he was quick to say that is a term of his own, not the forecasters'. A band of cloud runs along it, so rain, squalls and a three-metre-plus sea are on the cards, followed by a day of headwinds. Inside it, he said, the wind could be a flat calm one hour and a gale the next.
Lawless should feel only the edge of it. His bigger worry is the radio. McIntyre's understanding is that he can listen but may not be able to transmit. If his weatherfax still works it runs independently of the set and will keep him in forecasts. McIntyre, for one, would not lose sleep over it. Sir Robin Knox-Johnston got through 1968 with barely any radio at all.
The hole in the trades
Behind the leaders there is a different problem. A strong high has shifted north and left a gap in the south-east trades above Trindade, right where the steady breeze should be.
Ertan Beskardes on Miss Beagle is already easing off, and Andrea Lodolo on BiBi will follow. Both made about 153 miles on the day. Beskardes holds third with 22,303 miles to go and Lodolo is fourth on 22,597. If the gap stays open, McIntyre said, the drag race the fleet had been promised may not materialise.
Guido Cantini's Hannah of Cowes had the best day in the middle of the fleet at around 144 miles. Henry Wootton on Privateer logged about 110 at 5.3 knots, Isa Rosli's Olleanna is making 5.5, and Pär Nyman's Lazy Otter covered 88 miles at 4.4. Gunnar Christensen put 130 miles under Pompoen after being stuck pointing the wrong way, and McIntyre reckons he is happier with the boat and with himself for it.
Mara Kveseth's tracker is still faulty, which distorts her position and her VMG, so treat her numbers with care. McIntyre's rough sums put her a little further on than the dot shows. Louis Kerdelhué's IE Charge is still creeping through the Doldrums at under two knots. He sent his safety message again and McIntyre says nobody is worried. Guy deBoer, racing in the Chichester Class, is making 5.6 knots toward the same belt, roughly 500 miles behind Louis.
A Kiwi in the fleet
McIntyre confirmed on air that Matt Woodside, listed on the tracker as American, is a New Zealander. His Tipi Haere is a Cape George 36.
Woodside is rarely on the live broadcasts, but he averaged seven knots for four hours on Monday night, and people noticed. McIntyre added that a group of Kiwi yachties is planning to sail across the Tasman to be in Hobart when the fleet comes through, and escort it for the final miles.
Life on board
The equator has kept the skippers busy. Kveseth threw a ceremony and a dance party for her fifth crossing and thanked the gods for the lot. Étienne Messikommer, who had been eating cold food because it was too rough to cook, was heard south of the line on Monday. He had asked his followers to photograph wherever they happened to be as Bernard crossed, and he plans an album at the equator and at each of the three capes.
Christensen had a full programme for his first crossing. A bottle of alcohol-free Prosecco came courtesy of his partner Jen, who had smuggled it aboard. Half a bottle of red went over the side for Neptune, with the Calvados held back for the line itself at about 10pm UTC on Monday. He marked the RNLI training night with his crew hat on and sent his best to the Lymington lifeboat crew. Nyman is planning his own Neptune ritual for his first crossing in a boat. On Monday he climbed the mast under way, clipped to a safety line, to re-secure loose bolts on the mast track. He described it as a rodeo. Then he swam with 40 to 50 pilot whales, which he called the strongest experience of nature he has had. His earlier bolt trouble is in our previous report.
Beskardes gave his viewers a live noon-sight lesson on Tuesday and landed within about ten miles of his true position. He has plugged the leak in his gas locker, cut his own hair and had a camera overheat. He still hopes to pass Trindade on Thursday, 10 to 20 miles to the west. Arzu, back home, had hidden chocolate biscuits among his stores.
Guillou's day was grey, wet and nearly windless, a long way from the blue skies of the trades. The murk put him in mind of the Grand Banks, which suited his reading. He is working through a book about the Banks fishing fleets, marked with a bookmark his daughter Manon made, and has Alain Maignan's 2006 solo circumnavigation on the shelf too, a 36-footer sailed on six months' leave. He expects to cross 30 degrees south soon and will keep working toward 40 for the first low and the cooler air that comes with it.
Looking ahead
McIntyre says 30 skippers have already entered the 2030 race, among them a Nicholson 32 owner admitted by special dispensation after the model's listed displacement was revised. For now the two leaders have the Atlantic's last hard test to get through.
New to the race? Our skipper profiles cover the whole fleet, and our Day 34 report shows how the gap between the front two has moved since the trades arrived.
