Review – Deep Water (2006) – Documentary – The True Story of Donald Crowhurst

Nice article from About.com about a new movie that will be a must-see for sailors. It's called Deep Water and was released in the UK in December. (It's not out here yet and/or maybe called something different as there was a bloody scary diving movie by the same name 2 years ago)

Link: Review - Deep Water (2006) - Documentary - The True Story of Donald Crowhurst.

The movie is about the first solo round the world races in 1968.  The story of this race is fascinating. There were so many interesting characters in it (Knox-Johnston, Chay Blyth. Moitessier). In a perverse way, Crowhurst is the most interesting.

He was not much of a sailor by all accounts. At heart he was an inventor and a  hapless entrepreneur. His final invention was an electronic system for his trimaran which was way ahead of its time (Anyone who has owned an Audi will know what I mean). It was unreliable at best. He managed to raise the money to buy and rig his trimaran, "Teignmouth Electron", by mortgaging everything. He was betting on the fame of winning, propelling his electronics business and making him a millionaire. If he failed, he and his long-suffering family were stuffed.

In this first round the world race, there was no way of tracking the boats other than by the sailor's own radioed-in positions. For a long period of the race, the Sunday Times, the race's sponsor, had the Teingmouth Electron in the lead based on Crowhurst's reported positions.

The sad truth was that rather than being ahead of the pack and first round the Horn he was in fact sailing in circles in the Northern Atlantic off the Caribbean. One thing about Crowhurst was that he was a very good mathematician and was able to calaculate what his position should have been had been actually leading the pack.

Eventually, his position reports stopped. A few weeks later his boat washed up, empty in the Caribbean. His body was never found.

There is an excellent book on the race called Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nichols. It's a great read.