Damien Guillou, sailing Solarem, still leads the 2026 Golden Globe Race five days out of Les Sables-d'Olonne, but the margin is looking shakier than the number suggests. He's roughly 50 nautical miles up on Pat Lawless aboard Silvermines Hydro, yet Lawless is sailing in the better breeze of the two, 6.4 knots against Guillou's 6.2, and Don McIntyre's race team expect him to pull back three to five miles before the day's out.
Golden Globe Race 2026: distance sailed
Tracker snapshots, start to Day 4
Source: Golden Globe Race live tracker (Yellow Brick)
The more interesting move is back in third and fourth. Andrea Lodolo, on BiBi, logged the best run in the fleet overnight, 111 nautical miles at 5.1 knots, and is now bearing down on Ertan Beskardes aboard Miss Beagle. Beskardes is still ahead, 107 miles at 4.9 knots, but that gap is closing fast enough that today's tracker update could tell a different story.
Daniel Pinsky has pulled clear of the group he'd been sailing with overnight. Working just five nautical miles off Cape Finisterre aboard Exodus, he found new wind before Guido Cantini and Etienne Messikommer did, and it shows: 77 miles against their 42 and 44. Cantini and Messikommer are close enough now to see each other's boats, half a mile apart at last check.
Guy deBoer had the worst day on paper, 27 miles, but he's picked up a favourable current worth close to a knot of free speed and is now running at 4.8 knots. He could be level with the boats ahead of him inside 24 hours. Henry Wootton, tipped before the start as one of the fleet's strongest, is only just finding pace again at 3.7 knots after losing ground in the calm. Gunnar Christensen is still stuck in the same dead patch.
Helga Marie "Mara" Løvenskiold Kveseth, aboard Showgirl, logged a quiet 35 miles but is now doing 5.9 knots, which puts her in a stronger pocket of wind than most of the fleet around her. Selim Yalçin, on Help Disabled Children, has been holding high into a northerly breeze, tracking further north than his own weather should call for, and even race organisers couldn't explain why during Friday's broadcast. They're checking his messages.
Matt Woodside and Isa Rosli remain the two slowest boats in the fleet, both barely making a knot. Woodside's apparent silence on the tracker turned out to be a delay rather than a problem. Pär Nyman is still working back into the race after his delayed start, holding four knots.
A band of 25 to 28 knot wind is due to reach the mid-fleet later today, which should compress the gap to the leaders just as Guillou and Lawless run into lighter air of their own. If the front two can reach fresh wind funnelling out of the Mediterranean by tomorrow afternoon, they'll open the gap again instead. First boats are due at the Lanzarote film gate, a 20-minute pause to hand off letters and film rather than a stop, late on 15 September.
