METHOD

The tracker’s scheduled 4-hourly transmission at 00:00, 04:00, 08:00, 12:00, 16:00 and 20:00 UTC.

The position a report carries: latitude, longitude and YB’s distance to finish.

No fix within 20 minutes of a report time. The boat keeps its last position in the ranking and is marked; a run crosses a missed report in a straight line and is then written ≥ (see “A run written ≥”). A boat is never called stopped.

Trackers do not all report in the same minute. A report is shown about five minutes after its hour with the positions that have arrived. A boat that had a position at the previous report and has none yet is marked “position awaited”, and the line above the title says how many boats are still to come; the next update, a few minutes later, fills it in. After twelve minutes a boat still silent has missed the report. While a position is awaited the boat keeps its last position in the ranking, so a boat close behind may stand one place too high for those minutes, and a 24-hour run printed in grey with “to 08:00” is that boat’s run to the last report its tracker sent. A report waits in full, twelve minutes at most, in two cases only: fewer than three quarters of the boats that reported last time are in, or the position still to come is the leader’s, from which every gap is measured.

Latitude and longitude in degrees and decimal minutes, e.g. 29°33.6′N 013°39.9′W.

Rank by distance to finish at the report time, as YB orders the fleet. ± 24 h is the places gained or lost since the report 24 hours earlier, counted among the boats that have a current position now and had one then: a boat whose tracker was silent at either end shows a dash, and no boat gains or loses a place against her.

Distance to finish, measured by YB along its course line. Gap (DTL) is this boat’s distance to finish minus the leader’s; interval is the same to the boat one place ahead. YB redrew its line on 22 September 2026 and every figure on this site is on the new line: see “The course line, redrawn”.

The straight line between two consecutive fixes of one boat. Its great-circle distance divided by the time between the fixes is the leg’s average speed over the ground — a lower bound on true speed over ground (SOG), never boat speed through the water. A leg is never stretched across a missed report.

Distance sailed along the track over the six 4-hour legs ending at the report time. 7-day run: the same over 42 legs. A report the tracker missed in those hours: see “A run written ≥”. A boat that restarted shows “since restart” until it has seven days at sea. YB’s leaderboard has a 24-hour figure of its own, and it measures something else: the distance made good toward the finish, that is, how much the distance to finish fell in 24 hours. Ours is the distance sailed along the track, so it is the same or a little more.

On the Records page: the strongest model wind (the mean at a report, with the gust the model gave at that same report), the highest waves (significant height) and the longest calm (consecutive 4-hour reports under 6 kt of model wind; a missed report ends the spell) that each boat met, according to the model at her report position. Never measured on board, so they are what the boat met on paper: a skipper may have seen more, or less. The boards follow the page’s window; the table holds each boat’s own, for the whole race.

A boat’s fastest single leg and longest runs so far this race, start day excluded. A best leg lies between two consecutive reports. A best run is the 24 hours, or the seven days, ending at a report; where the tracker missed a report in them the run is written ≥ and still counts, because the boat sailed at least that far. Personal best (PB) is the boat’s own; fleet best the whole fleet’s. A new best is only announced once it is clear of a ≥ figure by more than a straight line could hide.

Nautical miles gained (+) or lost (−) on today’s leader over the last 24 hours, measured fix to fix on YB’s distance to finish. Blank for a boat without a current fix: a missed report is not a hundred miles lost. A skipper’s page gives the same figure against the boat one place ahead and the boat one place behind.

A 24-hour or 7-day run with a report the tracker missed in its window. Across a missed report the boat is credited with the straight line between the fixes either side of it; if the missing report is the window’s first, the run begins at the next one. Either way the boat sailed at least that far and probably further: a straight line across one missed report typically hides a fraction of a mile, a missing first report hides the four hours before the next. Such a run can be a record, written ≥ with the number of reports missed. It counts in averages and medians when it covers the full 24 hours; one that began late, its first report missing, is left out, because hours of sailing are missing from it. The Past races page counts only fully measured days throughout, best runs included, so that three years are set against each other by one rule, and the daily board names the biggest run by the same announcement rule, or else the biggest fully measured one. Everywhere else a ≥ run is ranked with its mark. A new best, or the fleet’s longest run of the day, is announced only once it is clear of a ≥ figure by more than a straight line could hide.

Every entrant starts in the Suhaili class (NOR C.2.1). A skipper who makes an unapproved stop, or receives material assistance, is placed in the Chichester class by the race and goes on sailing (NOR C.2.2). Day’s Run says so in one word beside the name and changes nothing else: the boat keeps her place in the ranking, her runs and her records, as the official tracker shows her.

A boat’s 24-hour run minus the median run of the boats within 150 nm of her, which sail much the same weather. It takes the weather out of the comparison, near enough. A boat that is not moving is left out of that median, because she is sailing no weather at all. A run written ≥ that covers the full 24 hours counts. Blank for a boat whose own 24 hours began late, its first report missing or the start or a restart inside them, and such a run is left out of the others’ median. Blank with fewer than two such boats.

The distance from a boat to the nearest point of the track the leader sailed, and the compass side she lies on: the tactical bet, in one number.

Two boats next to each other in the ranking, both with a current fix, within 15 nm of each other in distance to finish. The line on a duel’s card is that gap at every 4-hour report of the last three days, fix to fix; it sits above “level” while today’s leader of the pair was ahead. A pass is reported once, when the new leader is two miles clear; nothing is reported in the first three days of the race, when the whole fleet is within a few miles. Two boats can be level to the finish and far apart on the water: that is a split, not a match race.

One screen made for the race’s daily live show, covering the 24 hours to the latest report. Each column is a boat’s 24-hour run built from its six 4-hour legs, the oldest at the foot; the gold block is the fastest single leg of the day in the whole fleet, and the white tick is the same boat’s run over the 24 hours before. “Personal best” marks a boat’s longest 24-hour run of the race so far. A hatched block is a stretch with the tracker silent: the run is then a straight line across it, the least the boat sailed. The biggest run is the boat the site announces as the fleet’s longest run of the day, written ≥ when a report was missed in her 24 hours; when no run is clear of the others’ ≥ figures, the board names the biggest fully measured run and says so. The fleet’s average also takes a run with a hatched block when it covers the whole 24 hours, and leaves out a run that began late and a boat that is not moving. The fastest leg is the highest average speed on any single 4-hour leg of the 24 hours.

On the Fleet ranking and each skipper’s page: the average speed over the newest 4-hour leg, between the last two reports, with an arrow for the course made good over that leg: where the boat went, up for north. It is not a heading and not the speed at this moment. Blank for a boat that missed the report, because a leg needs a position at both ends.

Average speed on a 4-hour leg divided by the model wind speed at the boat, over the legs sailed in 8–25 kt since the start (or the restart). Below 8 kt a heavy boat barely moves and above 25 kt she is reefed, so neither says much. It needs ten legs, and a leg the boat spent not moving is no part of it. The wind is a model value, not a measurement on board.

Each 4-hour leg is classed by the angle between the direction the model wind blows from and the course made good: upwind under 60°, reaching 60–130°, running over 130°. Course made good is not heading, so this separates upwind work from running well and cannot see a gybe angle.

Over the last 7 days: the spread (standard deviation) of 4-hour leg speeds, the share of legs at 5 kt or more, and the hours on legs under 2 kt.

Average leg speed between 20:00 and 06:00 local solar time, from the boat’s longitude, minus the average of the other legs, since the start. It needs six legs of each.

The fall in YB’s distance to finish over a window divided by hours; the 7-day value drives ETAs. YB’s leaderboard calls the same idea VMG (recent = the last five fixes, or since the start) and publishes it in km/h, which we convert to knots. Distance made good is the reduction since the start; distance sailed is the sum of 4-hour legs.

How fast the boat has closed on the finish over the last seven days, in knots: the fall in YB’s distance to finish divided by the hours. It is the speed that counted; her average speed over the same days is the speed she sailed. Shown for a boat with a current position and at least three days of the week behind her (after a restart the week starts again). Negative when she is sailing away from the finish.

Miles sailed along the track over miles made good toward the finish, less one: +5% means five miles in every hundred sailed did not shorten the distance to the finish. Given since the start and over the last seven days. It is no mark of bad sailing: beating to windward, going round a calm and steering for a routing waypoint all cost extra miles on purpose. The distance to the finish is YB’s, measured along its course line, which cuts the corner at a mark, so made good can briefly outrun the miles sailed: the figure is never shown below nought. Blank for a boat without a current position, for one making under 0.2 kt toward the finish, and, since the start, for a boat that restarted.

The first mark of the course, in the order of NOR C.1.3, that a boat has not yet passed. Every mark has a distance to finish of its own, the point of YB’s course line nearest to it; a boat has passed the mark once YB has shown it less distance to finish than that. So an island left to port, a Southern Ocean waypoint left hundreds of miles to starboard and a cape are all judged alike, abeam. A mark once passed stays passed. The distance shown is the great circle from the boat to the mark; to the finish it is YB’s distance to finish.

Estimated time of arrival at the next mark, UTC: distance to the mark divided by made-good speed over the last 7 days (from the restart for a restarted boat). It doesn’t know the Southern Ocean is faster.

A mark is anything the fleet must pass (the NOR’s waypoints): the Lanzarote inshore rounding mark, the Island of Trindade, the no-go zone corners, Cape Leeuwin, the Hobart Gate, Cape Horn, the finish line. Gates are Lanzarote and Hobart only — the inshore marks and crossing lines where film is dropped (NOR A.1.6). Checkpoints are YB’s own timing lines (eleven; their positions are not published) and a split is the elapsed time to one. Sprints are this site’s unofficial elapsed times between two parallels, interpolated between fixes.

The 45°S, 49°S and 50°S waypoints of NOR C.1.3, labelled NO GO ZONE on the tracker: the fleet stays north of them, leaving each to starboard, except the last before Cape Horn, 50°S 90°W, which is left to port.

A return to Les Sables-d’Olonne and a new departure within 7 days of the start, with the Race Director’s prior authorisation (NOR C.1.2 “Re-Start”). Race time is not reset, so places are unchanged; speed, runs and ETAs for that boat count only from the restart.

GGR’s numbering: the UTC calendar date minus the start date (6 September = day 0, 7 September = Day 1), matching the daily video and written report.

A past voyage replayed by YB on this year’s calendar (its tag is “Previous Competitors”): Jean-Luc Van Den Heede 2018 (VDH), Kirsten Neuschäfer 2022, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston and Bernard Moitessier 1968–69. Ghost gap, in days: behind a ghost, how long ago its replay passed this boat’s distance to finish; ahead, how long until it will, at its pace over the last seven replay days.

Every entrant starts in the Suhaili Class. A stop or outside assistance moves a boat to the Chichester Class; a Suhaili entrant reaching Hobart after 12:00 local on 31 January 2027 becomes a GGR Voyager (NOR C.2). Retired boats keep their pages and records.

Model values from Open-Meteo at each report position, not measured on board. Wind is the hourly mean at 10 m and the gust, in knots, with the direction it blows from in degrees true; arrows point downwind. Force is Beaufort, derived from the rounded value shown (Force 8, a gale, is 34–40 kt). A gale day or light-wind day means every report of a UTC day at 34 kt or more, or under 6 kt. Waves are significant wave height, sea and swell combined; swell is given with its period. Current is the speed in knots and the direction it sets toward. Sea temp is sea-surface temperature; pressure is sea-level pressure in hPa.

Every number on this site can be downloaded from the Data page as Excel workbooks, one for each month of the race: a row per boat per day, and a row per boat per 4-hourly report. A day’s row closes at the 00:00 UTC report that follows it, and a day belongs to the month it was sailed in. Every month has the same columns in the same order, so months stack. A boat without a current fix keeps her last position with its true time, and the figures about her last 24 hours stay blank; a blank is never a zero. The positions are YB Tracking’s public feed and the weather is Open-Meteo’s; if you use the data, please follow their guidelines. Every column is explained on the Data page and inside each file.

The fleets of the Golden Globe Races of 2018 and 2022, every boat, from YB Tracking’s archives, measured by the same rules as this year’s, each fleet on the course it sailed. A race day is counted on each race’s own calendar: day 12 is the twelfth day after that year’s start.

The course’s length less YB’s own distance to finish, each fleet on the course it sailed: 26,599 nm this year since YB redrew its line on 22 September (25,755 before), 26,003 in 2022, 25,100 in 2018. The fleets are compared race day for race day: early in a race they sail the same water and their miles can be set side by side; once the courses part, the share of each race’s own course is the fairer reading.

Miles made good as a share of that race’s own course. The three courses differ by up to 1,499 nm end to end, so the share says what the miles say without a reader holding three lengths in mind.

The boat with as many boats ahead as behind, among those still racing that day. As boats retire it moves up the fleet: late in a race it describes the survivors.

From the start until the boat finished or retired, by the race’s own record. A skipper who sailed on in the Chichester class after one stop is racing.

Model wind at each boat at the end of each 4-hour leg. For 2018 and 2022 it is Open-Meteo’s archive of the ECMWF model; for this year the model wind used on the rest of the site. A whole fleet shares its weather, so read a difference of a knot between years as nothing. Upwind, reaching and running are the site’s classes (under 60°, 60–130°, over 130°) by the course the boat made good over the four hours, not its heading: a boat hard on the wind makes good a course 50° to 70° off it, so the upwind share is a low figure.

A skipper of this race who started an earlier one, set against that race on the same race day.

Lanzarote and Hobart: the race’s own timing of the boat through its gate, from YB’s record; 2018 has no Lanzarote timing in that record. The equator, the Cape of Good Hope (18°28′E, south of 30°S) and Cape Horn (67°16′W, south of 50°S): the crossing, interpolated between the two fixes either side. The finish: the race’s own record. “Half the fleet past” is the day the boat that makes half the starters through passed the mark: the eighth of sixteen starters, the ninth of seventeen.

The distance between the northernmost and the southernmost boat of a fleet on one race day, in nautical miles of latitude (a degree is 60). It says how far the fleet is spread up and down the ocean, not how far apart the boats are: two boats on one parallel can be hundreds of miles apart east to west.

On a skipper’s page: the boat’s bests with their dates, the slowest full day, the highest and lowest place, and the weather met, for the whole race. The slowest full day is the smallest 24-hour run between 00:00 UTC snapshots with all six legs measured and a report at both midnights — a run written ≥ is the least the boat sailed, so it can be a best and never a slowest day — from the first full day after the start; a restarted boat counts from her restart. Places are read from the 00:00 UTC snapshots from the fourth race day on, the first three saying nothing while the whole fleet is within a few miles, and a day the boat’s own tracker was silent holds no place. A gold tag marks a fleet record; a grey one, the boat’s standing on a stored board.

On 22 September 2026, between 13:20 and 14:20 UTC, YB redrew its course line for this race: 389 of its 511 points were replaced from Trindade onwards by 400 new ones, curved towards the road the boats will sail, and the line grew from 25,755 to 26,599 nm (844 nm longer: Trindade and Lanzarote 844 nm further from the finish, Cape Horn 696, the Southern Ocean marks between the two). YB then recomputed its whole track on the new line, every moment of every boat 844 nm further from the finish than before, and so did this site: every stored distance was brought up to what YB’s track says now and the whole race was re-derived, so the race reads on one scale, the current line’s. What never depended on the line: gaps between boats, runs, records, sprints, places, and the miles to the next mark, which are measured on the water. What moved with it, for everyone alike: distance to finish, the marks’ distances to go, the ghosts, and the course’s length. Made good since the start is nearly unchanged, since the redrawn part lies ahead of the fleet. The figure the tracker showed at the Lanzarote mark as the fleet passed it, which the route choices are measured from, was lifted by the same 844 nm.

The race’s own 24-hour video stream from the boats, one skipper at a time on a fixed weekly timetable in UTC, on YouTube. Eight boats carry the cameras. The timetable is copied from the race’s page (read 23 September 2026, valid to 25 October) and the site’s clock picks the boat live now and the next; nothing in your browser talks to YouTube or to the race’s site until you follow the link. When the race changes its timetable, this site follows on its next update.

On the Route choices page: a stretch of the course where the fleet took visibly different roads, such as north or south across the Bay of Biscay. A fork is defined once, by hand, and the same way for every year. It runs from an entry, which is the start or a mark (a boat reaches a mark at the moment her track passes closest to it), to an exit that is a point along the course in YB’s distance to finish: abeam a cape, or a set distance past the mark, counted from what the tracker showed at the mark. Each race is measured on its own course, and the exit is the same progress whichever road a boat took. Its sorting line is a line on the chart, the same for every year: a boat’s road is the side on which she first crossed it or, where the fleet spreads out only after the line, whether she ever sailed beyond it (in Biscay: north of 45°48′N, anywhere west of 5°W). A boat’s time through a fork runs from entry to exit; her time at each point is worked out between two reports four hours apart, so it is given in whole hours. Listed, and left out of the comparison: a boat whose race ended inside the fork, a boat that lay twelve hours or more at one place inside it, a boat that restarted where the fork begins at the start (her time then runs from her restart), and the boats still to come.

Two boats that took different roads at a fork and entered it within six hours of each other: the same weather, a different road. Where a fork begins at the start the whole fleet entered together, so every boat of one road is paired with every boat of the other. Two boats within half an hour of each other are level. A road is named as ahead when it wins at least two matched pairs in three, of at least three pairs, unless the other road has the lower median time by half an hour or more: the pairs decide, the medians can only object, and two medians within half an hour of each other are level. Otherwise the page says there is no clear winner, and shows the numbers all the same.

The mean model wind at a boat’s reports between her entry to a fork and her exit, and the share of those reports under 8 kt, which the page calls light air. For a road it is the mean over the boats in the comparison, each weighted by its number of reports. Model values from Open-Meteo (its archive of the ECMWF model for 2018 and 2022), never measured on board; a model does not see an island’s wind shadow or the acceleration along its shores.

Nautical miles (nm), knots (kt), degrees true, UTC. The Notice of Race speaks of GMT; for this race they are the same. Times are written 07:22 UTC; seconds appear only in YB’s splits.

On the Boats page: every boat on her design’s line, so that hulls are compared like with like. The window is 24 hours, 7 days or since the start. This race: the ranking’s own average speeds at the latest report; since the start is the miles sailed over the hours sailed, from the restart for a boat that restarted. 2018, 2022 and 2026: the three fleets read at 00:00 UTC of the same race day of each race, from the Past races page’s daily rows: 24 hours is that day’s 24-hour run, 7 days the miles sailed since the row a week earlier, since the start the miles sailed over the hours since the race’s start (a boat that restarted counts her miles from the restart, so she reads slow). The same race day is not the same weather; over months the windows will say more than the day does. A boat without the figure, or no longer racing that day, has no dot.

On the Boats page: every start of a design in the 2018 and 2022 races and how it ended, from the race’s own record (the Past races page names the source of every row). Finished means the race recorded a finish; a finish in the Chichester class, after a stop on the way, is a finish and is counted apart as well. The winner is the boat the race names the winner. This year’s boats are still out and are counted only as starts.

The figures on the design cards are as printed by the source named for each design, ranked the builder’s or designer’s own sheet, then the owners’ documents, then the race’s skipper pages; a field the best source does not give is left blank rather than filled from a weaker one. Rustler 36: the builder’s brochure and 2012 specification (waterline as 26 ft 11 in, the figure every other source repeats; the brochure’s 8.08 m disagrees with its own feet). Tradewind 35: the builder’s page, the waterline from the race’s page. Tashiba 36: the designer’s sail plan of 15 January 1986 and the builder’s brochure. Baba 35: the dealer’s brochure kept by the owners’ association, the number built from Sailing Magazine. Cape George 36: the 2022 winner’s own boat page and the race’s. Hans Christian 34: the race’s page, the draft and the production run from Practical Sailor. Saltram Saga 36, Vancouver 34, Biscay 36, Endurance 35, OE 32: the race’s skipper pages, the OE 32’s keel weight and number built from the Swedish registers. Feet and pounds were converted at 0.3048 m and 0.4536 kg. Hull speed is 1.34 × √(waterline in feet), the old rule of thumb for a heavy hull; displacement to length is displacement in long tons over (waterline in feet ÷ 100)³; sail area to displacement is sail area in square feet over (displacement in cubic feet of sea water)^⅔.