http://www.mininova.org/tor/2714054
Louise Osmond and Jerry Rothwell bring up a magnificent documentary around the first single-handed, non-stop, round-the-world yacht race held in 1968, the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race. Two prizes were giving, a golden globe to the man who finishes first in the race, and a 5000 pounds prize for the fastest man, but that was nothing compared to have your name written in the history books. There were no participation requirements, for this race wanted also to award those sailors who were already at sea on their private round the globe seas sailing adventure, the sailors were to start the race anytime between the 1 till the 31 of October, in order to avoid the winter weather of cape Horn.
According to the written records we have, the first to solo circumnavigate the globe seas was the american Joshua Scolum in 1895 and took him more than 3 years to accomplish with only the help of dead reckoning at his Spray. The difference this time was that it was non stop. For the inspiration of the participants, in 1967, Francis Chichester was knighted by the Queen for his personal adventures and achievements representing the UK and one of the participants, Frenchman Bernard Moitessier will be inspired by Slocum, calling his barque, Joshua. The adventure was filled with dangers and incognitos, for no one knew whether a boat or a human could take it.
Nine were the sailors who started the race, one was the sole navigator seeing back UK coast. The protagonists of the quest were 6 Englishmen (John Ridgway, Chay Blyth, Robin Knox-Johnston, Bill King, Nigel Tetley and Donald Crowhurst), 2 french nationals (Loïck Fougeron and Bernard Moitessier) and Italian Alex Carozzo. All of them were experienced sailors, but Crowhurst; six of them retired in the course of the race, 1 sank and rescued and one committed suicide. The wild South Atlantic Sea,with its five-story waves, each of them so different from the previous one, and foresees nothing about the next one was in great part responsable of this.
The solitude, you, the boat and the sea; The need for outer communication with other humans; Under these conditions you start to better knowing yourself, how do you come out and cope with situations and challenges you were never tested before? You start analyzing your creeds, your family, your country, yourself,…
The nine participants would follow the already abandoned clipper route (after the opening of the Suez and Panama canals): from the UK, south into the Atlantic ocean, to pass the cape of Good Hope, towards Australia, New Zealand, the rest of the Pacific, cape of Horn to enter back into the South Atlantic back Northwards to the UK.
This is the kind of quest not for adventure, fame, prestige or money, is a voyage into isolation and the delicate mechanisms of the mind, a battle which many thought you would finish mentally handicapped, like happened with Slocum, who suffered of metal lapses after his prolonged periods of time in completely loneliness with the waves as sole companions.
Some others thought that if it wasn’t your demons dwelling inside you, it would be the sea who´d finish you, as it happened with Joshua Scolum himself, lost in the seas eventually.
Before getting into the real protagonist of this documentary I think it deserves to mention the most intriguing figure of them all: Frenchman Moitessier. He was so mingled, so united with its maritime environment, so in peace with himself, the boat, the elements,… that right before he had almost accomplished the target and finished the race, at the point where he had already surpassed the cape of Horn and being located at the coast of Brazil pointing towards the Northern UK, he reported to his wife at Paris: “We shall meet again later”. At the time when he was already 7 months at sea and 6 weeks from home, Moistessier abandoned the race and turned his bow again towards the cape of Good Hope, he was sailing on around the world, … for a second time (another 21.000 nautical miles).
The main character in this piece is an unknown to sea sports fans, Donald Crowhurst, an ambitious, creative and charming individual married with 4 kids, who never really made it in any of the careers he started. This was for him his chance to make it big time, to come back home as a hero, to start a new with 5000 quids, to be recognized. He signed a contract with a local promoter, for which if the race is lost, Donald will have to buy back the boat built from scratch from the promoter, meaning, he will be bankrupted, so for Donald, loosing was not an option.
In order to get some more buzz and sponsors for his voyage, he was convinced to set sail 140 miles into the opposite direction of the race, to the North, and reached the coastal village in a 2 week time for what it was supposed to take him only 3 days, instant deception involved him together with the fact that he sailed without having completed any of his security devices, he expected to have them finished aboard at least before encountering the dangers of the South Atlantic. This never happened and made him realize this was probably his last endeavor. He was expected to communicate with new paper editors any time possible to report about his position, status, etc, in order to publish articles on the Sunday Times…and this is what he did…at the beginning.
Once he reached the South Atlantic ocean, the place that made Blyth and Ridgway retired, made him realized that he would never make it, so he started sending fictitious reports of his whereabouts so, while not moving from the Brazilian coast, could wait to the other two remaining sailors to make it back northward to the UK, and choose when to join them back, without actually ever sailing the whole race. The whole plan though will require to fake a sailing journey of hundreds of days inventing all the info in the logs, something quite challenging and even impossible, for after the race, these notebooks would be thoroughly revised by judges.
To come up with all that fake info and be accurate of every single day, and make it fit.
Right after rejoining the two remaining boats in the race, Tetley and Knox, Donald made up his mind and came to the conclusion that the farse would be discovered and total humiliation was not something he was prepared to cope with. The he wrote is his notebook these words:
“when I was 5 years old, I knew all about G’d, he was an old man who would punish me if I was naughty. By the time I was twenty, I decided there was no reason to expect any assistance from G’d, if he existed at all.”
“Man was avoiding his responsibility by constantly looking to G’d for assistance. The cosmic integral, the sum of man adds up to nothing (Sum?=[0]+[0]).”
“Do we go on clinging to the idea that G’d made us or realize that it lies withing us to make G’d. By learning to manipulate the space time continuum, man will become G’d and disappear from the physical universe as we know it.”
“I have become a second generation of cosmic being. I am conceived in the womb of nature, in my own mind, in the womb of the universe. I was forced to admit that nature forces on cosmic beings the only thing they are capable of: the sin of concealment. It is a small sin for a man to comit, but it is a terrible sin for a cosmic being.”
“I am what I am and I see the nature of my offense. I would only resign this game if you would agree that in the next occasion that this game is played it will be played by the rules devised by my great G’d. It is finished. It is finished. It is the mercy.”
“11:15:00. It is the end of my game. The truth has been revealed and it will be done as my family required it to do it.”
“11:20:14 There is no reason for harmful”
Robin Knox-Johnston took the race after 312 days.
Three videos in Italian, on “The Long Way”, about Bernard Moitessier’s journey around the globe, non stop, 1 full circumnavigation of the earth + 1/3 more till Haiti: