This year marks the 40th anniversary of the start of Sunday Times Golden Globe Race. The winner, Robin Knox Johnston was at sea for 313 days, becoming the first person to sail around the world single-handedly non-stop*. A documentary about the race came out last year. It didn’t get widespread distribution in the US, so I bought it on Amazon. I would recommend it to anyone who loves sailing. Here is the trailer.
It has great footage of RKJ, Moitessier and many of the other competitors. Although it does a great job of telling their story, the focus of the movie however, is Donald Crowhurst; a man who risked everything to compete – his business, his home and his family. Crowhurst was in over his head. He wasn’t experienced enough, his boat was not ready and he barely left England in time. (Good post at Captain’s JP’s blog about his trimaran)
After struggling through the Atlantic and clearly out the race, he stopped radioing in positions. Everyone gave Crowhurst up for dead. Suddenly Crowhurst’s positions re-started showing him gaining distance on the others. It looked like he might finish with the fastest time. Then just as suddenly as they had re-started, his reports stopped again.
His trimaran was found floating in the Caribbean – abandoned. It was clear from his logs that Crowhurst gave up making the circumnavigation early on but could not afford not to finish. It would have ruined him and his family. He floated around the Atlantic radioing false positions showing him chasing the others round the globe. It is believed that the guilt drove him mad and he killed himself rather than face the shame.
Crowhurst is always believed to be fraud – The cunning guy who got caught cheating. The movie takes a different angle. Crowhurst’s ego blurred his common sense and he cornered himself. His family and best friend recount what happened and why he drove himself into the situation. It’s heartbreaking listening to his wife and son talk about him, wishing that they could have stopped him, knowing in their hearts that he was going to his death because of the situation he had put himself in.
Rather than creating lame-ass re-creations of the events, they used actual footage and other material from the race, as well as interviews with his family, RKJ and others involved in the race. Unfortunately the movie is a little long so towards the end you get a little sick of the same pictures and shots being repeated.
All that said, a great way to spend a cold winter’s Saturday. You can buy it here.
* In my initial post I neglected this last point. Thanks to Tillerman for pointing it out
I hate to be a nit-picker but RKJ was NOT “the first person to sail around the world single-handedly.” He was the first to do it non-stop.
Joshua Slocum is usually credited as achieving the first single-handed circumnavigation in 1895-98, and of course Francis Chichester did it (with one stop) in 1966-67, and in less time than RKJ even counting his layover in Sydney. And in 1967-68 Alec Rose did it.
Good catch. Edit made I am reading Chichester’s book at the mo. More on that later. It’s fascinating.
Loved that movie. I’d been familiar with the story but I thought they did such a good job of bringing it back to life. Gave me shivers and not of the me-timbers arrr variety.
With all the extreme expedition madness that seems to be so prevalent these days, I actually thought there were some really relevant lessons for today in there. Sometimes look at all the crazy people out there doing things that just don’t look like fun & wonder whether any of them found themselves backed into something that on second, third or fourth thought they might really rather not do because they’d accepted sponsorship.
Once a person is somebody else’s dime, seems like they might start feeling obligated.
Just rambling…