Donald Crowhurst: the Sea Dreamer

Year 1968, British newspaper Sunday Times launches the first non-stop solo round-the-world race. At the start an unknown Englishman shows up in a tie. is unprepared, but ready for anything to satisfy his spirit of adventure and save his family from bankruptcy. We retrace the dramatic life of a man who gave everything to the sea.

There are many similarities between carrying a small boat and living. You leave totally unprepared, you have a long journey ahead of you that you think will never end. You know a series of triumphs and defeats. And suddenly you realize that what is done is done. The mistakes you have made are indelible.” And mistakes, in Donald Crowhurst’s life, many are made. it is 1968, the previous year Francis Chichester circumnavigated the world solo, and ocean fever breaks out in England. The Sunday Times newspaper launches the challenge: the fastest man to circle the globe nonstop and unassisted will win a £5,000 prize. Any interested sailor must depart in his or her own vehicle from any English port by October 31, 1968. Nine men accept the challenge. Among them was an unknown electronic technician, Donald Crowhurst, in fact.

An inexperienced dreamer
Born in the British Indies in 1932, Crowhurst spent a lonely childhood in Asia. When he and his family moved to England, he soon lost his father and began working as an electronics technician, founding his own company, but always juggling various financial problems. An amateur sailor, he also tries to patent numerous electronic boating instruments, without success. Chichester’s feat strikes his imagination, and the prize money proposed by the Sunday Times does the rest: Crowhurst wants to participate in the Golden Globe Race. The first problem, which is not insignificant, is finding a boat, and for two months he stubbornly tried to obtain the use of Gypsy Moth IV, the sixteen-foot Chichester, which the English baronet himself had referred to as “the worst boat to sail alone in.” This attempt having failed, incredibly Crowhurst finds a real sponsor to build his own boat. is Stanley Best, an RV builder, completely unfamiliar with boating. “My wife says I must have gone crazy. I did, I guess, because of the allure of that idea, the publicity and excitement, and Donald’s persuasive skills. On balance, round and round, you really have to say he was an extraordinary man, and as persuasive as any man ever,” says Best years later.

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FIND THE FULL ARTICLE IN OUR OCTOBER ISSUE OF THE SAILING JOURNAL.