Damien Guillou's lead over Pat Lawless is past 100 nautical miles now. Another 144-mile day at his now-familiar 7 knots puts him closing on 2,200 miles sailed since Les Sables-d'Olonne, and race founder Don McIntyre's own projections have him finishing around March if this pace holds. That's well ahead of the rest of the fleet, most of whom are tracking closer to April or May.
Golden Globe Race 2026: distance sailed
Tracker snapshots, start to Day 15
Source: Golden Globe Race live tracker (Yellow Brick)
Lawless can't find an answer to it. He put in 138 miles at 6.5 knots, good sailing by any measure, and still lost ground. McIntyre's assessment on the tracker call was matter-of-fact: similar breeze, similar effort, Lawless's boat just isn't quite matching Guillou's boat right now.
Andrea Lodolo is back in third aboard BiBi on a 134-mile day, though for a few hours this morning she wasn't even the fastest boat in her own group. Isa Rosli edged her by a slender 0.1 of a knot before she reclaimed the pace. Daniel Pinsky and Etienne Messikommer are within a mile of each other again, 131 to 130, with Guido Cantini and Ertan Beskardes close enough behind that this whole middle pack could look different by tomorrow. Louis Kerdelhué has taken a noticeably different line across the fleet, maybe hunting breeze, maybe just wary of putting the spinnaker up again, and it hasn't cost him: 122 miles for the day.
Selim Yalçin's week has turned serious. His diversion to Cádiz for a failed HF radio was meant to take a few days. It now looks like early next week before he's back underway, by which point he'll be roughly 2,500 miles behind the fleet. That puts him in real danger of missing the cutoff for the Storm Bay gate near Hobart, which closes at the end of January, the same deadline that forced hard calls on the stragglers in 2022. Missing it wouldn't end his race. It would push him outside the competitive classification for the rest of it.
Pär Nyman's crawl toward Lanzarote has become as much a story about McIntyre's flight schedule as it is about sailing. The team leaves tomorrow, there's barely any wind forecast for Nyman before then, and it now looks like they'll miss him altogether. He's still only making 1.7 knots with around 115 miles left to run.
Guy deBoer spent yesterday sorting through the provisions loaded aboard Spirit before the start. Most of it he never needed, and rather than carry it home he left it on the dock at Marina Rubicón for whoever wanted it. The repair itself is still waiting on money. There's a team ready to start the moment it arrives.
Conditions across the fleet are close to ideal, steady breeze, flat seas, time to catch up on maintenance and filming between watches. It won't stay that way. The approach to the Doldrums is next, and depending on how a developing weather system moves, it could just as easily open gaps in the fleet as close them.
