Guillou stretches clear as a serious hull problem clouds deBoer's return, and a major depression builds off Cape Verde

Damien Guillou's lead keeps growing, but the story dominating today's update belongs to Guy deBoer, and it's not good news. When the shore team in Lanzarote put load on Spirit's rig to check it properly, they found the D2 wires, the ones running from the first spreaders up to the base of the second, sitting slack with no tension on them at all. Tightening the rig to where it should be had an effect nobody wanted to see: the hull's curve inverted, bowed the wrong way entirely. Race founder Don McIntyre called it plainly on the tracker call, "the boat hull's not meant to move like that." A full survey is now needed before anyone can say whether deBoer restarts, or when.

Guillou, meanwhile, keeps doing what he's done for the better part of two weeks. Another 165-mile day stretched his lead over Pat Lawless by six more nautical miles, and he's using the run before the Doldrums to build as much cushion as he can. The forecast there has turned in his favour for once, the trade winds are pushing further north than usual, narrowing the belt of calms he'll have to cross. Lawless remains a comfortable second, 159 miles of his own at 6.4 knots, and now holds something like 230 miles over the chasing fleet, less a sign he's slowing than of how far clear the top two have sailed.

Third place looks settled for the first time in a while. Etienne Messikommer matched Lawless's exact daily distance, 159 miles at 6.7 knots, and has finally opened real space on the boats behind after weeks of saying his boat struggles in lighter air. Twenty-five knots suited him just fine. Ertan Beskardes and Guido Cantini remain locked together just behind, still close enough that neither has any breathing room.

Andrea Lodolo's tracker has gone quiet, and it's not clear yet whether that's a fault or a choice. Her last confirmed position came in at midnight UTC, and McIntyre says they'll try to reach her directly. But later in the same call he offered a different read entirely, that she's got a lot on her mind right now and simply hasn't felt like switching the camera on or engaging with the broadcast for a while. Those are two very different explanations, and McIntyre didn't settle on either. Worth watching over the next day or two rather than assuming the worst.

Further back, Henry Wootton keeps closing ground, a 144-mile day pulling him nearer to both Isa Rosli and Helga Marie "Mara" Løvenskiold Kveseth, who's dealing with something heavier than tactics right now. Her latest satellite call touched on the shift that's set in since Lanzarote, the point where the scale of what's still ahead stops being an idea and starts being real. Daniel Pinsky's lack of a working weatherfax came up too, a genuine handicap as the route grows more complicated and useful weather gets harder to come by through the limited channels the rules allow.

Pär Nyman has sailed a wide loop around Gran Canaria since his Lanzarote film drop, and even McIntyre can't explain it. He'd expected Nyman to head offshore briefly for a comfortable overnight sail, wind on the quarter, then cut back onto the direct line south. Instead he's kept going, right around the island, without correcting course. "I'm not sure why," McIntyre said. "Let's wait and see." By his own rough working, the detour has cost Nyman real distance along the course, not just extra miles on the log. Selim Yalçin remains in Cádiz with no update on his plans, race management still waiting to hear from him.

The bigger concern sits off Cape Verde, where a depression is building that could bring sustained winds around 35 knots and gusts as high as 45 to 50 in its strongest sectors, though the forecast models don't yet agree on where it'll sit or how hard it'll hit. Gunnar Christensen and Matt Woodside, both further north than most of the fleet, are the two most likely to feel it, depending on which way it tracks. A formal weather advisory is going out to the fleet.

That's a lot to land in one update: a serious structural question for one skipper, a tracker gone dark for another, and a real storm building in the middle distance. The next few days should clear up most of it.