The Teignmouth Electron was found drifting and abandoned. And his log books would come under serious scrutiny.īut Crowhurst never did come home. Suddenly, Crowhurst, the only other competitor left in the race, was going to be fastest, claim the Golden Globe and become a national hero. Another sailor, Nigel Tetley, looked as if he was going to come next and claim the prize for the fastest time, but then he sank (and was rescued). Robin Knox-Johnston was first in, and first to circumnavigate the world alone. Simon Crowhurst with his father’s log book. His yacht would rejoin the race on the return leg – not to be the first to arrive, or to record the fastest time, but to save face. He found a third way: he began to report false positions, fabricating a voyage he wasn’t making, pretending to circumnavigate the globe when in fact he never left the Atlantic. After being beset by problems and slipping farther and farther behind his competitors, Crowhurst was faced with an impossible choice: to continue to his death, or to return in humiliation and financial ruin (he had staked everything, including his house, on the race). He was underprepared and underfunded his 35ft boat was unsuitable and leaky, no match for the monster waves of the Southern Ocean. On 31 October 1968, the last day the rules allowed, he set off in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, a competition to be the first person to sail nonstop single-handedly around the world. The tragic story of Donald Crowhurst’s last voyage is well-known.
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