round the world yachtsman

• Yachting World
• Digital Edition

Donald Crowhurst: The fake round-the-world sailing story behind The Mercy

• October 2, 2019

The mysterious and tragic disappearance of the single-handed sailor Donald Crowhurst more than 50 years ago continues to fascinate. Nic Compton explains why...

Hailed as a round the world single-handed hero, Donald Crowhurst in fact never left the Atlantic during his 243 days at sea. Photo: Alamy

It was while I was researching my book about madness at sea in 2015 that I first heard a movie about Donald Crowhurst was in the works. Several websites published reports of a high-profile British feature starring Colin Firth and Rachel Weisz, and a few surreptitious photos of the cast filming off Teignmouth had been posted online. It seemed a lucky coincidence, given that my book would inevitably feature the Crowhurst story, but I assumed the movie would come out long before my book was ready.

Over the next couple of years, however, the release date for the film was repeatedly postponed – so much so that it became a running topic among Hollywood gossipmongers, who speculated that Crowhurst’s widow Clare had delayed progress, or that it was being held back to tie with the 50th anniversary of the events, or indeed that it might never be released in cinemas and go straight to DVD instead.

Meanwhile, I carried on writing my book, Off the Deep End , which was published in 2017, and the movie, The Mercy , was released in February 2018. There was never any doubt the tragic story of Donald Crowhurst would have to be included in any book about madness at sea.

Colin Firth stars as Donald Crowhurst in the 2018 film The Mercy . Photo: Studio Canal

Of all the stories I researched, it’s the one that has caught the public imagination most. Long before the latest Hollywood offering it inspired movies, books, plays, art installations, an epic poem and even an opera. Whereas many stories of adventures at sea seem to leave the general public cold, the Crowhurst tale continues to fascinate more than 50 years after Teignmouth’s most famous sailor vanished without trace. And yet, despite the thousands of words written about him, we really know very little more about him than we did 50 years ago.

It all started when Francis Chichester made his historic single-handed circumnavigation in 1966-67 – not the first to do so, by any means, but certainly the fastest up to that point, completing the loop in 226 days with just one stop, in Sydney, to repair his self-steering. Even before he’d docked at Plymouth there was a general realisation, which spread like osmosis throughout the sailing world, that the next step would be to sail around solo without stopping.

The challenge was turned into a contest by the Sunday Times which, in March 1968, announced two prizes: a Golden Globe trophy for the first person to sail round the world via the Three Capes single-handed and non-stop, and a £5,000 cash prize for the person to do it in the fastest time. The only stipulation was that competitors had to leave from a British port between 1 June and 31 October 1968, and had to return to the same place.

Article continues below…

A voyage for 21st Century madmen? What drives the Golden Globe skippers

A voyage for madmen, so was the original Sunday Times Golden Globe Race deemed. When the first non-stop race around…

How extreme barnacle growth hobbled the 2018-19 Golden Globe Race fleet

Eighty-knot gales, 10m-high waves, pitchpoling, loneliness and ever-depleting food reserves… of all the challenges facing a single-handed non-stop circumnavigator you…

Nine skippers eventually signed up for the race: the famous transatlantic rowing duo Chay Blyth and John Ridgway, who had by then fallen out but were sailing near-identical 30ft glassfibre production boats; Bernard Moitessier, already something of a legend in France for breaking the long-distance sailing record on his steel ketch Joshua; Moitessier’s friend Loïc Fougeron; Robin Knox-Johnston , an unknown British merchant navy officer sailing a heavy wooden boat called Suhaili ; two former British naval officers, Bill King and Nigel Tetley; the experienced Italian single-handed sailor Alex Carozzo; and Donald Crowhurst.

Out of the group, Crowhurst was by far the least experienced, the odd one out. Born in India in 1932, he went to Loughborough College after the war, until family nances and the death of his father forced him to cut his education short. He joined the RAF in 1948 but was chucked out after six years because of some high jinks with a vehicle; the same thing happened when he joined the army and he was forced to resign after he was caught trying to hotwire a car during a drunken escapade.

Persuasive character

Crowhurst with his wife Clare and their children Rachel, Simon, Roger and James, circa October 1968. Photo: Getty Images

Next he got as job as a travelling salesman for an electrics company, but was again dismissed after crashing the company car.

Ever-persuasive, he talked himself into a job as chief design engineer for an electronics company in Somerset, and in 1962 set up his own company, Electron Utilisation, to manufacture electronic devices for yachts.

The company got off to a good start, selling a simple but well-designed radio direction finder which Crowhurst dubbed the Navicator. Pye Radio invested £8,500 in the project, before getting cold feet and pulling out.

It quickly became clear that while Crowhurst was a charismatic personality and brilliant innovator he didn’t have the business acumen to run a successful company, and Electron Utilisation was soon in financial trouble.

Crowhurst managed to persuade local businessman Stanley Best to invest £1,000 to carry the company over what he assured him was a temporary lean period.

It must have been obvious to Crowhurst that he was heading for another failure. By now 35 years old, he could see the same pattern repeating itself, of high ambition thwarted by petty practicalities. Only, by now married to Clare with four children and living in a comfortable house outside Bridgwater in Somerset, the stakes were higher than ever.

His response to failure was to reinvent himself yet again. This time he would become a record-breaking sailor, a seafaring hero in the vein of Chichester: he would sail around the world single-handed – even though he had until then only dabbled in sailing, mainly on board a 20ft sloop called Pot of Gold . First, however, he needed a boat.

After failing to persuade the Cutty Sark Committee to lend him Gipsy Moth IV for the voyage, he decided a trimaran would be the ideal craft – despite having never sailed on one. To get the funding to build his dream boat he achieved perhaps the greatest coup of his life.

With Electron Utilisation going down the pan, his backer Stanley Best wanted his loan repaid, but Crowhurst managed to persuade him the best way to get his money back would be to fund the construction of the new boat.

A replica of the 41ft Teignmouth Electron used in the filming of The Mercy . Photo: WENN Ltd/Alamy

The crux of his argument was that he would use the trimaran as a test bed for his new inventions, and the publicity gained from entering the race would catapult the company to success. The sting in the tail was that the loan was guaranteed by Electron Utilisation, which meant that, if the venture failed, the company would go bankrupt.

To understand how he managed this turnaround you have to go back in time. Photos of Crowhurst make him look geekish and uncool to the modern eye. With his sticky-out ears, high forehead, curly hair, tie and V-neck jumper, he appears the epitome of the eccentric inventor.

But all the contemporary accounts describe him as a charismatic, vibrant personality, the sort of person who lights up a room when they walk in – as well as being extremely clever. In fact, his cleverness was his problem. He had the gift of the gab and, once persuaded of something, could talk anyone into believing him.

“This is important,” said his wife Clare. “Donald had this definite talent. He would say the most amazing things, but then no matter how crazy they seemed, he’d be clever and ingenious enough to make them come true. Always. This is a most important point about his character.”

Crowhurst’s widow, Clare, holds the last photograph taken of Donald with his family. Photo: Guy Newman / Alamy

Slow off the mark

So Crowhurst got the money for Teignmouth Electron , which was built by Cox Marine in Essex and fitted out by JL Eastwood in Norfolk. It’s a measure of how far behind he was that by the time the Cox yard started building the hulls towards the end of June, Ridgway, Blyth and Knox-Johnston had already set off on their round-the-world attempts. In the event, complications meant the launch date was delayed and even when Crowhurst finally set off on 31 October – just a few hours before the Sunday Times deadline expired – his boat was barely complete.

None of the clever inventions he had devised for the boat were connected, including the all-important buoyancy bag at the top of the mast, which was supposed to inflate if the trimaran capsized. His revolutionary ‘computer’, which was supposed to monitor the performance of the boat and set off various safety devices, was no more than a bunch of unconnected wires.

Worse still, he had had to borrow yet more money from Best to finish the boat, and had mortgaged his home to guarantee the loan. Crowhurst made a desultory figure scrambling about the deck of his trimaran as he set off on his great adventure – only to turn around within a few minutes to untangle his jib and staysail halyards, which were snagged at the top of the mast.

It was just the start of his troubles. After two days at sea, while still within sight of Cornwall, the screws started falling off his self-steering and, not having any spares on board, he had to cannibalise other parts of the machine to replace them.

A leaky boat

A few days later, halfway across the Bay of Biscay, he discovered the forward compartment of one of the hulls had filled up with water from a leaking hatch.

Soon, other compartments began to leak and, as he’d been unable to get the correct piping for the bilge pumps, his only option was to bail them out with a bucket. Then, two weeks after leaving Teignmouth, his generator broke down after being soaked with water from another leaking hatch.

“This bloody boat is just falling to pieces due to lack of attention to engineering detail!!!” he wrote in his log. A few days later he made a long list of jobs that needed doing and concluded his chances of survival if he carried on were at best 50/50. He began to think about abandoning the race.

But Crowhurst was in a triple bind. If he dropped out at this stage, not only would his reputation be destroyed but his business would go bankrupt and, perhaps worse of all, he and his family would lose their home. For all these reasons, giving up was not an option.

It soon became clear his estimates for the boat’s speed had been wildly optimistic: he had estimated an average of 220 miles per day, whereas the reality was about half that, on a good day. There was no way he was going to catch up with the other competitors or win either of the prizes, unless something extraordinary happened.

And so, just five weeks after setting off from Teignmouth, Crowhurst started one of the most audacious frauds in sailing history: he began falsifying his position. From 5 December, he created a fake log book, with accurately plotted sun sights, working back from imaginary positions.

To make it look convincing, he listened to forecasts for the relevant areas and wrote a fictional commentary as if he was experiencing those conditions. It was quite a feat of seamanship, and only someone of Crowhurst’s brilliance could have carried it off convincingly.

The great deception

After a few days’ practice he felt sufficiently confident to send his first ‘fake’ press release, claiming he’d sailed 243 miles in 24 hours, a new world record for a single-handed sailor. In fact, he’d actually sailed 160 miles, a personal best perhaps, but certainly no world record.

And so the great deception began. As Crowhurst slowly worked his way down the Atlantic, his imaginary avatar was already rounding the Cape of Good Hope and heading into the Indian Ocean. Gradually, partly through misunderstandings and partly due to the spin added by his agent back in the UK, Crowhurst’s positions became ever more exaggerated, until it looked like he might win the race after all.

Meanwhile, the real Crowhurst was pottering around the Atlantic – ‘hiding’ in exactly the same area he had, only a few weeks earlier, jokingly suggested a sailor might hide to falsify a round-the-world voyage. To make sure his radio signals weren’t picked up by the wrong land stations, he maintained radio silence for nearly three months, from the middle of January until the beginning of April, which he blamed on his generator breaking down again.

Teignmouth Electron was found drifting in mid-Atlantic, 700 miles west of the Azores, on 10 July 1969

Unbelievably, he even put ashore in a remote bay near Buenos Aires in Argentina to buy materials to repair one of the hulls, which had started to fall apart. Despite being greeted and logged by local officials, this rule-breaking stop remained undetected.

On 29 March he reached his most southerly point, hovering a few miles off the Falklands, 8,000 miles from home, before starting his ascent up the Atlantic.

Finally, on 9 April, he broke radio silence and exploded back into the race with a telegram containing the infamous line: “HEADING DIGGER RAMREZ” – suggesting he was approaching Diego Ramirez, a small island southwest of Cape Horn (in reality, he was just off Buenos Aires).

By this time Moitessier had had his ‘moment of madness’ and had dropped out of the race and was sailing to Tahiti ‘to save his soul’. The only other competitors left were Knox-Johnston, who was plodding slowly up the Atlantic and on track to be the first one home, and Tetley, racing in his wake to pick up the prize for the fastest voyage.

Rachel Weisz plays Clare Crowhurst in The Mercy

It seems likely that Crowhurst was planning to finish a close second to Tetley, which would save him from financial ruin without drawing too much attention to his fraudulent log books.

But his reappearance in the race had a dramatic effect on the course of events. Already nursing a broken boat up the homeward leg of the Atlantic, Tetley worried he might lose the speed record to the resurgent Crowhurst, and started pushing his trimaran faster towards the finish line. Some 1,100 miles from home, the inevitable happened: Tetley’s boat broke up and sank, and he had to be rescued by a passing ship.

Suddenly, the spotlight shifted to Crowhurst, the unlikely amateur who’d apparently come out of nowhere to beat the professionals. The BBC had a crew on standby to record his homecoming and hundreds of thousands of people were expected to throng the seafront at Teignmouth to welcome him home.

It was everything Crowhurst dreaded. As one of the winners, his books would come under much closer scrutiny – and indeed there were already some, including race chairman Francis Chichester, who suspected something wasn’t quite right.

In the middle of June, Crowhurst reached the Sargasso Sea and, as the tradewinds died and his boat slowed down, he descended into a mental quagmire of his own. It was as if all his previous failures had caught up with him in this one grand, final failure.

Teignmouth Electron on Cayman Brac in 1991. The wreck has deteriorated considerably since. Photo: Geophotos / Alamy

And this time there was no way out, no way of reinventing himself. Instead, he gave up ‘sailorising’ and resorted to philosophising instead. Over the course of a week, he wrote a 25,000-word manifesto that described how mankind had achieved such an advanced evolutionary state that it could now merge with the cosmos. All that was needed was ‘an effort of free will’.

He ended his journal on 1 July with this desperate appeal: ‘I will only resign this game / if you agree that / the next occasion that this / game is played / it will be played / according to the / rules that are devised by / my great god who has / revealed at last to his son / not only the exact nature / of the reason for games but / has also revealed the truth of / the way of the ending of the / next game that / It is finished / It is finished / IT IS THE MERCY’

There then followed a countdown, ending at 11:20:40 precisely. It’s not known what happened next, but it’s generally assumed Crowhurst jumped over the side of the boat to his death. His empty yacht was found by a passing ship on 10 July with two sets of log books on board: the real and the fake.

It was left to Sunday Times journalists Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall to piece together what had happened and to reveal to the world Crowhurst’s elaborate hoax. With Crowhurst and Tetley both out of the race, Knox-Johnston, on his slow wooden tortoise of a boat, was the only person to finish the race and was duly award both prizes – though he subsequently donated the £5,000 cash prize to Crowhurst’s widow.

Huge public interest

The Golden Globe race generated enormous public interest at the time, and the discovery of Crowhurst’s boat was front page news. It’s a fascination that has continued almost unabated to this day. The French film Les Quarantièmes Rugissants , based on the Crowhurst story, was released in 1982, while at least five plays have picked up the theme, as well as the 1998 opera Ravenshead.

In 2006, the acclaimed documentary Deep Water incorporated contemporary footage of the race, including some shot by Crowhurst during his voyage, and in 2017 director Simon Rumley released his own stylised take on the story, called simply Crowhurst.

The Mercy , then, is only the latest take on the Crowhurst saga – although with Colin Firth and Rachel Weisz on board, it is the most high-profile. So how does it compare to previous efforts?

As you’d expect of such a mainstream movie, the focus is firmly on the psychological drama rather than on the sailing – which is probably just as well considering how often films get the details of sailing wrong. There are some minor errors – Chichester wasn’t the first person to sail around the world single-handed, and the prize for the first competitor to finish the race was a trophy, not £5,000 – but the sailing scenes are generally quite convincing.

More importantly though, The Mercy is a captivating psychological drama, which shows how, through a series of small steps, a person can box themselves into a corner from which there is no escape. It’s this humbling of a deluded but essentially well-meaning man that gives the story such resonance and has inspired artists and writers for more than five decades. For, as anyone who has sailed out of sight of land knows, the sea has a knack of bringing out our inner demons. There is a Crowhurst in us all.

First published in the March 2018 edition of Yachting World. The Mercy is available to watch on BBC iPlayer until 11 Jan 2021 . 

• Privacy Policy
• Copyright and DMCA Notice

Donald Crowhurst and his Fatal Race Round the World

In 1968, British newspaper The Sunday Times sponsored the first ever round-the-world yacht race. Guaranteed excellent publicity from the paper, nine contestants enlisted, drawn by the glamor of winning such a race, as well as the £5,000 prize for the fastest time (as much as $120,000 today).

The race was well organized but there were several safety concerns. Yachts were to be manned by a single person only as the race was a solo one, and the race would be non-stop. Competitors could not be vetted thoroughly on the safety of their boats and their abilities as sailors , and there were no entry requirements.

Competitors could start the race at any point between 1 June and 31 October 1968. One such competitor, who set off on the very last day, was Donald Crowhurst.

An Ambitious Man

Donald Crowhurst was not a professional sailor but had some knowledge and experience about sailing. He was an inventor and electronics engineer, and hoped to use this to his advantage during the race.

To aid in his navigation, he created a radio-direction finder that he named “Navicator” and he would make the attempt in a very unusual boat design, a trimaran called the Teignmouth Electron . Trimarans could theoretically travel much faster than monohull boats, but had not been tested on such a grueling expedition.

Crowhurst hoped to stabilize his business with the publicity and money that he would get by winning this race, but the upfront costs were steep. To take part, he raised financing from some businessmen and mortgaged his home as well.

This allowed him to finish work on the Teignmouth Electron which he had constructed specially for the voyage. The boat-builder promised Crowhurst that the boat would be speedy but warned about stability issues in heavy seas.

But on the first sea trial of the boat, a few noticeable problems came up. The deadline was rapidly approaching and it wasn’t possible for Crowhurst to equip new parts and repair the vessel properly to make it ready for the race.

• The Sarah Joe Mystery: Disappearance in the Pacific

SS Baychimo: Ghost Ship of the Arctic

He only had two ways and was faced with a dire choice: either sail and take part in the race with a doubtful boat, or give up to face bankruptcy and humiliation. Crowhurst, fatefully, took the first option, setting sail in a boat untested in either design or practice.

The Race Begins!

Just like the boat wasn’t ready, the weather wasn’t favorable for the race as well. Clare, Crowhurst’s wife, suggested to him not to take part in it, as there was a great risk. But as she saw Crowhurst sobbing with the thought of humiliation, she and their four kids tried to make Crowhurst believe he could do anything. They didn’t want him to regret the thought of giving up.

On 31st October 1968, the weather miraculously calmed and gave Crowhurst his opportunity to start the voyage. Crowhurst kissed the forehead of each of his children and asked the elder ones to take care of their mother, and launched the Teignmouth Electron .

Soon after the race began, Crowhurst observed that the boat was already leaking like a sieve. And he realized right at that moment that this boat wouldn’t be able to take the blow from 30 or 40-foot (9 – 12 m) waves in the Southern Ocean , writing in the logs that the ship would probably sink once it entered heavy seas.

Trapped and with no options left, Crowhurst started to come up with a plan! He didn’t want to give up and live with humiliation forever, he would rather cheat than lose.

The Crooked Plan of Donald Crowhurst

GPS didn’t exist back then, and so the only way of checking the position of the boats after the race was through a review of the logbooks and the charts carried on each boat. Donald Crowhurst intended to use this to his advantage, saving his boat and completing the race.

Therefore, he started sending radio messages to the organizers giving false positions. He charted a false course down into the south Atlantic, and then, fearing his transmissions might give him away, he then disconnected the radio contact completely off the coast of Brazil .

Even these waters were too much for the T eignmouth Electron . His boat was so damaged at one point that he had to stop at a fishing port in Argentina to make some necessary repairs.

Crowhurst’s plan was to maintain two logbooks, one for his real journey and one for his fictitious race experience. The pressure of keeping two logbooks would have been extreme, and was made worse when he realized that his fictitious log wouldn’t be justifiable at close scrutiny if he won the race.

• Taken by the Ice: What Became of the Franklin Expedition Crew?
• Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight – Mystery at Sea

The logbooks would need to contain weather conditions during the course of his voyage. Crowhurst had no idea what the weather was like where he was supposed to be, and the fictitious log reflects some of this in its hazy descriptions.

Claiming to be making good time, Crowhurst wandered in the Atlantic until, finally, his made-up voyage started to catch up to his actual position. At this point the race leader was Nigel Tetley, who was making excellent time. Crowhurst intended to let Tetley win, with himself coming second to avoid much of the log-book scrutiny.

In May 1969, Donald finally turned back for home. But again he had miscalculated, as his apparent pace panicked Tetley. Forced to race at breakneck speed to keep up with Crowhurst’s apparent pace, Tetley’s boat failed and he capsized .

This meant Crowhurst was now far in the lead and on course to get the £5,000 prize for being the fastest competitor. With this victory he felt sure his cheating would be exposed.

After 243 days at sea, Crowhurst made his last entry in his logbook on 1st July 1969. He wrote, “It is finished, It is finished. It is the mercy.” And that was the last anyone heard of Donald Crowhurst.

Lost at Sea

12 days after his last logbook entry, the Teignmouth Electron  was found drifting in the ocean . There was no sign of Donald Crowhurst. It was believed that he had jumped off the boat with his fictitious logbook, leaving behind the actual one on the deck by way of confessing his sins.

Crowhurst’s wife maintained that he would never commit suicide, but the evidence of the logbook was telling. He had hoped to become a British folk hero who conquered the seas, but in the end his sin was that of pride.

And so his life ended, trapped by his lies. Here was a man who believed he could sail across the world but couldn’t even make it past the Atlantic, and who believed he could fool the world, but ultimately left nothing behind but his confessional logbook.

Top Image: Donald Crowhurst never made it home. Source: hikolaj2 / Adobe Stock.

By Bipin Dimri

They Went To Sea In A Sieve, They Did. Available at: https://www.sportsnet.ca/more/big-read-donald-crowhursts-heartbreaking-round-world-hoax/

The Mysterious Voyage of Donald Crowhurst. Available at: https://howtheyplay.com/misc/The-Mysterious-Voyage-of-Donald-Crowhurst

The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst. Available at: https://jollycontrarian.com/index.php?title=The_Strange_Last_Voyage_of_Donald_Crowhurst

Bipin Dimri

Bipin Dimri is a writer from India with an educational background in Management Studies. He has written for 8 years in a variety of fields including history, health and politics. Read More

Related Posts

Was yasser arafat poisoned, tamám shud the somerton man: solved at last, agatha christie’s disappearance: amnesia, suicide, or despair, the blackbird of chornobyl: was it a warning, sergei ponomarenko, the man who slipped through time.

Accessibility Links

Colin Firth plays Donald Crowhurst in The Mercy, the film about his round-the-world yacht race

The strange tale of donald crowhurst and his attempt at the sunday times round-the-world yacht race is brought to life in a new film with colin firth. by jeff dawson.

I t says something about diverging postwar fortunes that, in 1969, while America feted Neil Armstrong, Britain was crossing its fingers for the amateur yachtsman Donald Crowhurst. A 36-year-old father of four, Crowhurst was the antithesis of a buzzcut adventurer. Brow furrowed, baggy-jumpered, he was better known in Bridgwater, Somerset, as a struggling inventor, knocking up marine navigation equipment in his shed.

Yet, that April, there he was, breaking radio silence to announce that his trimaran, Teignmouth Electron, had successfully rounded Cape Horn and was steering a course for home. He didn’t know it yet, but he looked set to complete the fastest non-stop solo circumnavigation of the Earth.

A “weekend sailor” with no ocean-going experience, Crowhurst had been an unlikely entrant in The Sunday Times

• Skip to main content
• Access keys help

This terrific documentary recounts a battle against the odds much like Touching the Void , but it ends very differently. In 1968, eight of the world's best yachtsmen set out to win the prize for the first solo, non-stop, round-the-globe circumnavigation. The ninth is an inexperienced Englishman and weekend yachtsman called Donald Crowhurst, who quickly finds himself in trouble. What follows is an incredible story of a man trapped between the deep blue sea and a series of self-made blunders.

Directors Louise Osmond and Jerry Rothwell quickly sketch Crowhurst's dilemma. Mortgaging his house and staking everything on this race, he's hailed as "the dark horse of the sea" by the newspapers. The public love an underdog, but Crowhurst's voyage begins ominously when the champagne bottle cracked against the hull doesn't break first (or second, or third) time. At sea, his self-designed boat falls apart, he's battered by bad weather and he succumbs to despair. Finally he decides to fake his journey, hiding out off the coast of South America for several months. Faced with the empty vastness of the ocean, madness sets in.

"A DEEPLY MOVING DOCUMENTARY"

Deep Water recreates Crowhurst's ill-fated trip using news footage, his journals, tape recordings and - a great coup - the 16mm footage that he shot on deck. The result is a deeply moving documentary, buoyed up by teary interviews with Crowhurst's family, friends and rivals. Stories celebrating heroic journeys are commonplace, but this is a sobering, anti-heroic tale of an ordinary man who set out to attempt the extraordinary... and failed through a cruel combination of bad luck and bad judgement.

End Credits

Cinema Search

New Releases

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Hero's welcome for Robin Knox-Johnston - archive, 1969

23 April 1969: The people of Falmouth turn out in force to greet the first solo yachtsman to sail non-stop round the world

Robin Knox-Johnston, the first solo yachtsman to sail non-stop round the world, was resting last night after a hero’s welcome from the people of Falmouth.

He completed his 30,000-mile voyage in 312 days and a Cornish harbourmaster summed up the feelings of all seafaring men as he watched the battered 32ft. ketch, Suhaili, complete the final agonisingly slow tacks to the finishing line: “He’s a real professional.” he said.

Television viewers heard Sir Francis Chichester, sailing only feet from Suhaili say of Knox-Johnston: “You can’t help admiring him. The more you see of him, the more you admire him. He’s really playing it very cool.”

He had been escorted by a Royal Navy minesweeper and the boats of the Truro and Falmouth harbourmasters, but as he neared the line, he was met by everything in Falmouth that could float - not the least of his skill was in avoiding running down the small boats. His brothers were put on board at the finishing line and drank brandy with him.

He came ashore at a yacht club in a change of clothes to a salute of shots and walked unsteadily up the red carpet to meet Sir Francis Chichester. He was also welcomed by the Mayor of Falmouth, who read congratulatory telegrams from the Queen, Prince Philip, Mr Wilson and Mr Heath.

Later, Sir Francis Chichester officially declared him winner of the Sunday Times Golden Globe race. Knox-Johnston said he had kept going when he did not think he had a chance of winning, but the news in Australia that he was in the lead had encouraged him.

• From the Guardian archive

More on this story

Clipper Round the World yacht race sets off from London

UK and Ireland commemorate 1979 Fastnet race disaster

Dinghy sailors close in on Great Britain circumnavigation record

Simon Speirs' family fear more lives could be at risk in Clipper race

Michelle Lee becomes first Australian woman to cross ocean solo in a rowboat

Australia's Wendy Tuck wins Clipper Round the World yacht race

‘Shoestring sailor’ Rose’s round-the-world epic still enchants, 50 years on

Ben Ainslie gets America's Cup funding from backer of Brexit and fracking

Rob Mitchell obituary

Doomed sailor Donald Crowhurst is ripe for a biopic – as two rival films demonstrate

Comments (…), most viewed.

  © Shipping Wonders of the World 2012- 23   | Contents  |   Site Map  |   Contact Us  |   Cookie Policy

Gerbault and the “Firecrest”

Having abandoned his profession as a civil engineer, Alain Gerbault sailed a 39- ft yacht round the world. Though several times death all but claimed this fearless adventurer, he achieved an astonishing triumph

GREAT VOYAGES IN LITTLE SHIPS - 3

AFTER he had sailed round the world in the old English cutter Firecrest , Alain Gerbault , the French yachtsman, linguist and lawn tennis player, had a new yacht built for him and sailed single- handed back to the Pacific. There he took up his abode among the Polynesians. In two of his books, The Flight of the Firecrest and In Quest of the Sun (Hodder and Stoughton), Gerbault tells the story of his world voyage and reveals part of his character. His attitude towards life is the opposite of that expected of the conventional Frenchman, as Gerbault states his decision to avoid cities and to lead the plain life of the sailor and bathe body and mind in sunshine.

A MODERN ULYSSES. Gerbault photographed at Suva, in the Fiji Islands. Tired of cities and civilization, this intrepid amateur sailor set out to find solace on a voyage which took him round the world.

His imagination and sensitiveness isolated him at school, but he found that the sea offered solace. His father owned a yacht, and Gerbault made friends with the children of the Breton fishermen. He dreamed of the day when he would own his own boat.

Gerbault’s imagination was fired by reading books about the sea, and even during the war of 1914- 18, when he was an aviator, he longed to be afloat. He and two comrades decided to buy a yacht and sail her round the world.

As it happened, the two friends were killed, and after the war Gerbault decided that he, the survivor, would carry out the voyage alone. He had been trained as a civil engineer, but abandoned his profession and began to look for a yacht that he could handle by himself.

After having searched in France for a year Gerbault crossed the Channel. He found the Firecrest near Southampton and bought her. The Firecrest was the type of yacht that few experienced cruising men would have selected for a blue- water cruise, but Gerbault was enthusiastic about her, and rightly so, for she did all that he asked her to do. The Firecrest was a racing cruiser, designed by the late Dixon Kemp , and built by P. T. Harris at Rowhedge, Essex, in 1892. Her overall length was 39 feet, her length on the water- line 30 feet, her beam 8 ft 6- in, and her draught 7 feet. She had a lead keel weighing three and a half tons, with another three tons of inside ballast.

The Firecrest was flush- decked, with a companion- way, a hatch forward, two skylights and a sail- locker hatch. A 6- ft canvas folding dinghy was carried folded on deck.

The yacht was built of oak and teak. Her accommodation was divided into three compartments - forecastle, saloon and the cabin aft. This sleeping cabin had two bunks, with lockers under them, a wash- basin with a fifteen- gallons water tank and book- racks.

The saloon had lockers and a folding table; the forecastle contained two folding cots and the galley. Gerbault cooked on a paraffin pressure stove hung on gimbals to counteract the roll of the yacht.

His other two water- tanks were forward, and he stored provisions in the lockers. Light was provided by an oil lamp and by candles hung on gimbals. He preferred the cutter rig to that of ketch or schooner on the ground that he found it easier to reef than to furl sails and because the cutter rig gave him the maximum efficiency for his needs.

Gerbault took the Firecrest to the Riviera. She was tested by gales in the Bay of Biscay during this passage, and fully justified his faith in her. He spent more than a year cruising on the Riviera with an English boy for shipmate, playing in lawn- tennis tournaments. He set out single- handed from Cannes in April, 1923, for the first stage, a sail to Gibraltar, when he felt sure he was fit to stand the physical and mental strain.

At this period Gerbault carried a squaresail and ran before a gale, logging thirty miles in three hours, an exceptional run for a boat only 30 feet on the water- line.

With such an unusually narrow yacht the single- handed sailor found the task of getting in the squaresail dangerous, as he appears to have made the mistake of carrying on too long before a rising gale. The yard of the squaresail was 20 feet long, and in trying to get it down Gerbault found that the lee- end touched the water, and he nearly went over the side. It took him over an hour to get sail and yard stowed on deck, and the experience was such that he vowed never to use it again. He had then had sixteen hours at the tiller, and was glad to heave to for the night.

AFTER 24,000 MILES. A photograph of Alain Gerbault sitting in the bow of the Firecrest after his arrival at Suva. The Firecrest , which had suffered considerably on her voyage through bad weather and running aground, was hauled up on a slipway at Suva, where some necessary repairs were made. After having left here the yachtsman sailed west to New Guinea, and then passed through the Torres Strait, north of Australia.

The old- fashioned plank- on- edge type of cutter naturally proved hard on her gear in a storm in the turbulent Mediterranean. Gerbault had scarcely started before he was busy with repairs. He had roller- reefing on his mainsail, and the gooseneck of that broke; a topping lift parted; and then his jib halyard gave way and spilled the jib into the sea. He saved the sail at the risk of his life.

When the gale ceased, a period of light airs and calms ensued that lasted for nearly three weeks, and it was not until May 15 that Gerbault anchored at Gibraltar. He had a well- stocked library aboard, and, more important, had the right temperament for enduring protracted calms. This gift of patience is essential for the deep- sea cruising man, and unless he possesses it he will subject his nerves to a strain that will be greater than that imposed by a gale.

Some of the dockyard “mateys” at Gibraltar still remember the state of the Firecrest’s gear when she arrived; it was certainly in a bad condition. Everything was put right, however, and in a few weeks Gerbault prepared for a non- stop sail from Gibraltar to New York. It was an ambitious effort, as no one had attempted the east to west passage non- stop and single- handed before.

In addition to the necessity of overhauling the vessel before embarking on such a trip, there arose the important problem of food and water. Gerbault took aboard the following supplies: 80 gallons of water, 80 lb of salt beef, 60 lb of ship’s biscuit, 30 lb of butter, 20 lb of bacon, 24 pots of jam and 50 lb of potatoes. He left Gibraltar on June 6, and was fortunate enough to find enough wind to blow him clear of the Rock, so that at night he saw the Tangier light. Then the wind, which had increased to gale force, veered right ahead, and blew his jib to pieces; therefore he reefed his mainsail and hove to under that and the foresail while be turned in for the night.

Next day he had more trouble. The patent roller- reefing gear, which had been repaired at Gibraltar, failed because of a fracture; and the mainsail began to part at the seams; thus before he was two days out of Gibraltar he was busy repairing his mainsail. He passed Cape Spartel, the African corner of the Strait of Gibraltar, and gained the open Atlantic, picking up the trade wind on the third day.

Noon observations showed Gerbault that the Firecrest had covered fifty miles in the first two days from Gibraltar. Considering the strong set of the currents into the Mediterranean from the Atlantic, and in view of the fact that he had left the yacht to herself at night, he had done fairly well. When he settled down to run before the trade wind, he found that the design of the Firecrest needed a hand at the tiller all the time; thus he steered for twelve hours, after which he hove to and went below to sleep, turning out at five o’clock in the morning to cook breakfast. This consisted of porridge, bacon, ship’s biscuit and butter, and tea and condensed milk. In common with most other yachtsmen who have cooked in the forecastle of a small yacht, he found that the roll was too much for the gimbals, so that whatever was on them occasionally rolled off.

ROUND THE WORLD. The course of Gerbault’s voyage is shown on these sketch maps. He began his trip when he left Cannes, in the French Riviera, in April, 1923, and ended it when he reached Le Havre in July, 1929. The Firecrest , an English boat, was built at Rowhedge, Essex, in 1892. Her overall length was 39 feet, her length on the water- line 30 feet, her beam 8 ft 6- in, and her draught 7 feet. The yacht, which Gerbault bought near Southampton, was built of oak and teak. Her accommodation was divided into forecastle, saloon and cabin aft. This vessel weathered all the storms and gales of the ocean and her name will never be forgotten by yachting enthusiasts.

The need for constant steering necessarily added greatly to his labours, and before long he had more trouble with his gear. The bobstay, running from the end of the bowsprit to the stem, broke, and he had to go out to the end of the bowsprit to repair the wire rope. Then the foot of the mainsail ripped.

In the neighbourhood of Madeira, which he did not sight, the trade wind fell off. During the calms that followed, Gerbault experimented with his sails and found that by furling the mainsail, setting the trysail and trimming the jib in flat he could get the Firecrest to hold her course unaided by the tiller. He was therefore able to sail round the clock, although the speed under this rig was not as good as that under the full mainsail: thus freed from the tyranny of the tiller he was able to enjoy life a little more.

When Gerbault had been at sea for a month he found that the bulk of his water had gone sour. He carried fifty gallons in two new casks that he had bought at Gibraltar, and this had gone bad. Only half of the thirty gallons he had stored in galvanized iron tanks remained; thus he had to ration himself to half a glass of water a day. When the wind came again his sails kept ripping; and then his salt beef began to go bad. This happened when he had about 2,400 miles to sail.

THE YACHT that sailed round the world. The cutter Firecrest , in which Alain Gerbault sailed round the world alone, taking some six years to accomplish an astounding feat of endurance and navigation. In his 39 ft boat, which was over thirty years old, the French navigator sailed more than 40,000 miles. His course was from east to west.

Before long, various parts of the wire rigging gave trouble. Gerbault found that for many purposes rope is better than steel wire, because rope will bear jerks and jolts much better than wire. He cut his water ration to a cup a day, and a fortnight passed before he was able to catch a quart of rain- water in a sail. Then he contracted fever and was too listless to pick up the flying fish that flopped on to the deck during the night. When he recovered he threw the cask of salt beef overboard. He was successful in catching fish, dangling his feet in the water to attract them and then spearing them as they came near to inspect. Not until August did he meet heavy rain, and this yielded him ten gallons of water. The fish diet then gave him a mild form of fish poisoning, and he had to restrict that type of food.

Gales swept the yacht as she sailed through the hurricane belt. On one occasion Gerbault had to climb into the rigging to get out of reach of a sea that broke aboard the Firecrest , burying her deck under tons of water. The sea broke the bowsprit and caused part of the rigging to give way, so that the mast was in danger.

To add to his troubles, both the stoves were out of action, and he considered running for Bermuda, the nearest port. After having had some rest, however, he set to work on one of the stoves and obtained a hot meal. He then repaired the rigging and his broken bowsprit. After this he was determined to make for New York, which he eventually reached 101 days out from Gibraltar.

Gerbault then went to France, leaving the Firecrest in New York. He returned to her in 1924, to fit her out for the passage to the South Seas. The refitted Firecrest was a great improvement on the old ship. She had a new Oregon pine bowsprit, new standing rigging, new sails, a water tank holding forty- four gallons, a bronze bobstay, a hollow boom and a new roller- reefing gear. The original gaff mainsail was replaced by a triangular one. Among the stores were a bow and arrows for shooting fish, rifles, a mile and a half of film and a library of books.

Sailing from New York in November, Gerbault met bad weather almost from the start. On November 5, when he had not seen a vessel for two days, he saw that his port light was out, and went- below to light it, but stopped to prepare a meal. He was filling the lamp when a steamer scraped the bowsprit of the Firecrest . Hastening on deck, Gerbault saw her lights as she continued on her course, evidently unaware that she had scraped the yacht, which she had probably not seen in the darkness. The force of the blow tore the bitts out of the foredeck of the Firecrest and broke the forestay and the jibstay, so that the mast threatened to go at any moment. Gerbault carried out temporary repairs, but had an anxious time in the gales that battered the yacht before she anchored in the harbour of St. George, Bermuda.

Thus, in spite of his elaborate fitting- out in New York, the accident of the collision and the effect of the gales on the crippled yacht reduced her to a sorry state in little more than a fortnight. As he had set out before stretching his new sails the gales had spoiled the set of the mainsail, and he had to have that recut.

Much of the work done in New York had to be done all over again in Bermuda. One expensive job was the re- caulking of the hull, which meant that the copper sheathing had to be raised and then put into place again. Gerbault had been in France while his yacht was being refitted in New York; but in Bermuda he was on the spot, supervising the work and seeing that it was done to his satisfaction.

Repairs took about three months. Gerbault then sailed for Colon, the Atlantic entrance to the Panama Canal , which he reached without mishap. He was towed through the Canal, and spent some time at Balboa, on the Pacific side. Here he met Harry Pidgeon , a Los Angeles photographer, who was on the concluding stage of a single- handed voyage round the world in the yawl Islander , only 34 feet long, which Pidgeon had built himself. He was the second man to sail round the world alone.

Gerbault’s next stage was from Panama to the Galapagos Islands. Because of the medley of currents and the fickle and light winds the voyage from Panama to the Galapagos Islands is one of the most tedious stretches of water for a sailing vessel. On one occasion Gerbault had sailed 450 miles through this stretch of water in about a fortnight, but because of the adverse current he had travelled only five miles. Then he managed to creep south to Malpelo Island, an isolated rock 300 miles from the mainland of South America, and slowly forged ahead out of the northerly set of currents.

At last, thirty- seven days out of Panama, he reached Chatham Island, in the Galapagos, some 800 miles from Panama. Here he obtained water and fruit, and prepared for the long sail of 3,000 miles to the Gambier Archipelago.

ARRIVING AT LE HAVRE in July, 1929, at the end of his spectacular voyage. Gerbault avoided a constant watch on the tiller since he found that if he furled his mainsail, set the trysail and trimmed the jib in flat, the Firecrest could hold her course. This picture shows the cutter being towed to a landing stage.

Gerbault ran south, losing the trade wind in a week of calm. When the wind returned the rigging was in such a bad state that several mishaps happened almost at once. A backstay went and so did both topping lifts and six mast- hoops, and the oak tiller snapped. After, forty- nine days at sea Gerbault anchored in the harbour of Rikitea. In the months he spent with the natives Gerbault learnt their language, and then sailed 1,000 miles north to the Marquesas, where he again made many Polynesian friends, becoming more and more friendly with them. He sailed on to the coral islands of the Tuamotu group, and so to Tahiti. His attitude to the officials was to avoid them, and he says that he was- almost as solitary living aboard the Firecrest in the harbour of Papeete as when he had been at sea; but he made many friends among the natives. When he sailed to Bora Bora, an island near Tahiti, he became friendly with the officers of British and French naval sloops.

It was at Wallis Island that Gerbault had the misfortune to be blown on to a reef while at anchor. He had previously lost his anchors and had borrowed one, which failed to hold the yacht in a gale. The Firecrest knocked off her lead keel on the reef, and Gerbault was swimming to the shore when, relieved of the weight of the keel, the Firecrest floated over the top of the reef and followed him to the beach, digging a berth for herself in the sand.

Wallis Island consists of an island and a number of islets surrounded by a lagoon which is enclosed by a coral reef. Gerbault entered this lagoon by a passage in the wall of coral. The Firecrest was wrecked on a reef in this lagoon and went ashore, without the lead keel, on the beach of the main island. About 5,000 Polynesians lived on the island, but there were no shipwrights or smiths.

The first thing Gerbault did was to right the Firecrest . He took all the ballast out and moved his personal belongings to the homes of friends ashore. With the aid of natives the yacht was righted and shored up. The lead keel was uncovered by the tide, which left the reef at low water. A lighter was floated over the keel at high water, and the keel was lashed to the bottom of the lighter and floated by this means to the beach near the hull of the yacht.

Gerbault replaced his belongings aboard the Firecrest and lived in the yacht while he waited for aid from civilization. His chief concern was to obtain new bolts for the keel. After many weeks a steamship having a forge aboard entered the lagoon, and the chief engineer forged two iron bolts and made four bronze bolts out of an old propeller shaft.

After several failures the keel was placed in position by shifting it into the water and floating the hull over it. Two Chinese, however, who were the only artisans on the island, made the holes in the wooden keel so large that when the tide rose the water leaked in at an alarming rate. At this stage the French naval sloop Cassiopee , sent to aid Gerbault by the French Minister of Marine, arrived. Before long her crew had fixed the keel firmly in position.

IN PARIS. A picturesque view of the yacht Firecrest moored on the River Seine, with the Eiffel Tower in the background. After his amazing trip, the French mariner published the story of his adventures and sailed back alone in another yacht to the Pacific Islands where he lived among the Polynesians, whose company he found congenial.

During his stay of some months Gerbault had become so popular with the islanders that they asked him to stay and be their chief, but when the Firecrest was repaired he put to sea. On arriving at Suva, in the Fiji Islands, he had the Firecrest hauled up on a slipway, and further repairs were made. After having left Fiji, Gerbault put in at various islands and reached New Guinea, and then passed through the Torres Strait, north of Australia. He nearly came to grief in the reef- strewn waters when his anchor chain parted, after he had lost his kedge anchor because of the hawser snapping. Without an anchor, he was relieved to see a native sloop, and when he hailed the men they offered to tow him to Coconut Island. He took the tow- rope, and several natives came aboard; these men were alarmed when the Firecrest heeled over in the- brisk breeze, as they were not- familiar with this habit of narrow, deep- draught yachts.

At the island, Gerbault was unable to buy an anchor, but managed to borrow one on condition he left it at Thursday Island for the owner’s friends to collect. Gerbault obtained ground tackle at Thursday Island and sailed clear of the reefs. He went on to the

Cocos- Keeling Islands, where he saw the remains of the famous German raider Emden .

Gerbault then sailed across the Indian Ocean to Rodriguez, and for the first time trusted himself to a pilot. The Firecrest touched the coral in a narrow channel, the pilot not realizing that a deep- keeled yacht carries considerable way on her.

At the next island, Reunion, he had various ironwork repaired, which was a wise resolve, as the passage to Durban was a rough one. It was even rougher to Cape Town, where Gerbault dry- docked the Firecrest , finding that teredo worms had eaten away part of the rudder stock.

His next stages were St. Helena and Ascension Island, and the passage from Ascension to the Cape Verde Islands brought trouble. He crossed the Equator and slowly worked north up to the islands, but was baffled by bead winds when near them.

Porto Grande, the chief harbour in the group, is in the island of St. Vincent, which is separated from the island of St. Antonio by a channel a few miles wide through which the trade wind blows with some force, raising a strong current. Instead of standing clear of this by going round St. Antonio, where he would have had ample sea room, and turning to approach Porto Grande from the north, Gerbault made many attempts at the channel; thus he became tired out. The wind fell light, and he slept, to be awakened by a slight shock as the Firecrest stranded on a reef a few yards from the beach of St. Antonio, where the current had carried her.

Gerbault’s activity in getting ashore and locating a village when he realized that nobody had seen his plight saved the Firecrest , as the weather remained fine long enough for her to be taken off. A hole had been knocked in her side, but this was plugged, and, with a crew manning a line of buckets to keep her afloat, she was towed across the channel to Porto Grande. She was repaired and Gerbault sailed, but she leaked so badly that he turned back and decided to stay at St. Vincent for some months, superintending repairs and writing a book.

When he left for the fast time it was obvious to him that the Firecrest would not last much longer; she leaked, compelling him to work hard at the pump to keep her afloat. He put in at the Azores and then sailed on the last stage of the long voyage, arriving at Le Havre in July, 1929.

More than six years had elapsed since the Firecrest had sailed from Cannes, and she had covered more than forty thousand miles.

Gerbault proved himself a skilful navigator, but was less happy with his gear. He was hampered by having to start with an old boat. Such a voyage is hard on a little yacht which was over thirty years old when she had left France. Slocum and Pidgeon sailed in new boats.

Despite the hardships of life in a small yacht, Gerbault had energy to spare for tennis and football when he went ashore in tropical ports. Twice wrecked, he patched up the Firecrest and completed the voyage when a man of less persistence would have admitted defeat.

Physical fitness served Gerbault in good stead on many occasions. When the yacht had stranded at a desolate spot on St. Antonio, he half- ran and half- walked over broken country under a hot sun without the least fatigue, although he had had little rest for four days. Then he worked hard removing gear from the yacht and gave a cinema entertainment to the islanders who had come to his aid; not until then did he think about sleep.

Gerbault’s determination and his physical fitness were outstanding features of a wonderful voyage of circumnavigation.

AN ENTHUSIASTIC CROWD thronged the quay at Le Havre to greet the solitary yachtsman when he landed in France. This photograph shows the adventurer being helped from his vessel by some friends. During the last stages of the voyage from St. Vincent (Cape Verde islands), Gerbault had not only to work his yacht alone, but also to labour at the pumps to keep her afloat, as she was in such a poor condition.

You can read more on “Captain Slocum the Pioneer” , “First Voyage Round the World” and

“Pidgeon and the Islander” on this website.

The crazy story of the round-the-world yachtsman, the Cornish pub and the long-lost barometer

It looks like a joke item - but this 'Lovely day for a Guinness' novelty barometer from St Austell was a vital part of the equipment in the world's first solo non-stop circumnavigation of the globle.

• 16:47, 20 JUN 2018
• Updated 17:34, 20 JUN 2018

Our weekend morning emails feature the very best news and exclusive content from our team of reporters

We have more newsletters

When yachtsman Sir Robin Knox Johnston set out on his epic first solo, non-stop circumnavigation of the globe 50 years ago, he carried an item of contraband.

On his way to Falmouth for the start of the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race in 1968, Sir Robin broke the barometer on his yacht Suhaili.

In those days before the internet and satellite communications, a barometer was a yachtsman’s first warning of approaching bad weather, so Sir Robin borrowed the distinctive 'Lovely day for a Guinness' barometer hanging on the wall of the St Austell Brewery-owned Chain Locker.

The barometer was stolen from Sir Robin some time after his 312-day voyage, so he was unable to return it to the pub.

Last week, as Falmouth played host to the Suhaili 50 Sail Parade, Sir Robin made amends and handed over a replica barometer to Chain Locker manager Nathan Boundy.

However, just a day later the barometer had once again disappeared from the wall of the St Austell Brewery-owned restaurant.

The culprits were soon tracked down – the organisers of the 50th anniversary round-the-globe race.

After the sail parade on the Fal of the boats taking part in the anniversary race, the skippers set off for Les Sables d’Olonne in France, for the start of the race proper.

Among them was the Thuriya, a replica of Sir Robin’s Suhaili, built in India and captained by Indian Royal Navy commander Abhilash Tomy. And on board was the missing barometer – secreted there by Golden Globe race organiser Don McIntyre.

“Abhilash is the only Indian to sail around the world non-stop and solo like Sir Robin and we couldn’t let the fabulous story of the barometer just stop there,” Mr McIntyre said. “So now it’s on its way around the world again on a replica of the Suhaili and history is repeating itself.

“Who’s to say that it won’t find its way back to the Chain Locker in another 50 years.”

St Austell chief executive and keen yachtsman James Staughton said: “When we first heard about the disappearance of the replica, we and the team at the Chain Locker were all naturally concerned. But who doesn’t love a good story and this really is one of the best.

“We wish Abhilash the very best of luck on his voyage and look forward to welcoming all the skippers back with a pint of Tribute at the Chain Locker on their return.”

While the Thuriya, as a replica of a 50-year old boat, stands at a little of a disadvantage against the more contemporary designs of its competitors, having the mascot of Sir Robin’s barometer on board may well help to bring her home ahead of the field. When it does, staff at the Chain Locker will no doubt be ready with hammer and nails to ensure the barometer becomes a more permanent fixture at the pub next time around.

Sir Robin was one of nine sailors who set out on the gruelling Sunday Times Golden Globe Race on June 14, 1968 – and the only one to stay the course. He returned to port on board Suhaili in April 1969.

to complete what was to become the greatest sailing achievement in a small boat during the last century.

“It is wonderful to be back in Falmouth and to receive such a warm welcome,” Sir Robin said. “Everyone has been so kind and this week’s celebrations have all brought back so many memories of my short time here at the Chain Locker.”

Mining, mine holes and mine rescues in Cornwall

“We had a fabulous evening when we arrived earlier in the week and there was such an amazing atmosphere here in the pub, just like it was when I came here 50 years ago and you don’t get that in many places these days.”

• Armed Forces
• Most Recent

In Conversation With Sir Robin Knox-Johnston Part 1

Words & video emily harris.

Legendary British yachtsman, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, relives his epic solo circumnavigation as competitor in the 1968–1969 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race . Talking exclusively to Classic Yacht TV, Sir Robin recalls what it took to become the first person to sail solo, non-stop round-the-world , and he comments on the 2018 Golden Globe Race that’s been devised to celebrate 50 years since his great feat.

The video features Sir Robin recalling Southern Ocean waves and the seamanship skills he relied on to survive the conditions faced during his voyage.

©Robin Knox–Johnston Archive / PPL

©Classic Yacht TV

This exclusive is released as 2018 Golden Globe Race competitor Susie Goodall , campaigning a 36-foot Rustler Yacht 'DHL STARLIGHT', is rescued by a 40,000 tonne cargo ship some 2,000 nautical miles west of Cape Horn in the Southern Ocean.

On the 5th December at 1100 UTC, Susie Goodall activated her EPIRB, prompting another international coast guard rescue mission for the 2018 Golden Globe Race. In big seas and 60 knots of wind, a wave powered-up astern causing Susie Goodall’s boat DHL STARLIGHT to pitchpole, resulting in the total loss of the rig.  This dismasting marks the fifth competitor in the 2018 Golden Globe Race to retire as a consequence and reminds us of the harsh conditions needed to be endured in order to “get round”, as Sir Robin Knox-Johnston says in the video.

Classic Yacht TV’s candid interview with Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, below, is part one of a five-part series featuring the British solo circumnavigator giving valuable answers to questions on single-handed seamanship in small boats. He identifies with the Southern Ocean's brutal conditions and how he dealt with them. The video gives sailors and spectators a unique insight into boat handling from the first man to solo circumnavigate the planet non-stop, 50 years ago during the 1968-69 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race.

Titled 'In Conversation With Sir Robin Knox-Johnston', Part 1 begins by asking Sir Robin "Can you describe rounding Cape Horn in 1968?".

WATCH VIDEO BELOW

Press white play button.

© Classic Yacht TV. Directed & edited by Emily Harris.

Camera noel probyn. sound mix craig bilham., thanks to sir robin knox-johnston & clipper round the world race..

Talking from within the Clipper Round the World Race HQ in Gosport, the video offers an insight into Sir Robin’s attitude towards ocean sailing.

While answering "What are your memories of the Southern Ocean in 1968–69?” Sir Robin reveals his practical technique that, he says, made it possible for him to endure the Southern Ocean in his 32ft wooden boat, SUHAILI.

"Did you clip on in the 1968–69 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race?" – It had to be asked! Sir Robin's answer? Well, it may just save you, even if you have a harness on.

ABOVE: film stills from Classic Yacht TV’s excluSive interview

Another practical answer sheds light on him tuning SUHAILI's rigging ahead of setting off in 1968, and this is where you'll see a moment of his frustration at those employing arrogance at sea.

The legendary British sailor – now 79 years old – goes on to talk about how he coped learning on the job and the vital factor of knowing your boat .  Before the end of Part 1, Sir Robin's great determination and focused mentality stands out as he reminisces spending 312 days at sea. 

2018 Golden Globe Race dismastings:

Are Wiig – dismasted on 28th August 2018.

Abhilash Tomy – 360º spin and dismasting Day 82.

Gregor McGuckin – Dismasted day 82 and jury rig sailed to Abhilash Tomy.

Loic Lepage – Dismasted 600 SW of Perth, Australia.

Susie Goodall – Dismasted 5th December 2018

PART 2 COMING SOON

A regularly edited, exquisite listing of the world's finest classic yachts for sale. Watch exclusive videos on here.

Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates.

We respect your privacy.

British yachtsman Simon Speirs, 60, dies in round-the-world race

Simon Speirs, 60, is the third Briton to die in the Clipper Round The World challenge in the last two years

By David Mercer, News Reporter

Sunday 19 November 2017 14:01, UK

A British sailor has died after being washed overboard during one of the world's toughest yacht races.

Simon Speirs, 60, was taking part in the year-long Clipper Round The World challenge as a crew member with team Great Britain.

The retired solicitor, from Bristol, was helping to change a sail when he fell into the Southern Ocean during rough conditions on Saturday, organisers said.

He is the third Briton to die competing in the event in the last two years.

Clipper Ventures, the firm behind the race, said Mr Speirs was clipped on to his team's 70ft long yacht with a safety tether but "became separated".

He was brought back on board by the boat's crew 36 minutes later and given CPR but never regained consciousness, the company said.

The cause of death has not been confirmed but he is believed to have drowned, it added.

More from UK

Politics latest: Humza Yousaf asked if 'breaking up is better than being dumped' as he confirms deal with Greens scrapped

Post Office inquiry latest: 'Complaints handler' executive who 'misled' previous Post Office judge says she's 'truly sorry' - but it's dismissed as 'meaningless'

Two horses which bolted through central London in a 'serious condition'

Clipper Ventures said an investigation will look at why the safety tether did not keep Mr Speirs on board.

The incident happened as teams raced from South Africa to Australia, with Mr Speirs' crew in sixth place.

Clipper Ventures described Mr Speirs as a "highly experienced sailor" who had joined the 40,000-mile Clipper Race on 20 August.

"Simon's next of kin have been informed and our deepest thoughts are with his family and all those who knew him," the firm said.

OFFICIAL STATEMENT: We are extremely saddened today to report the fatality of Simon Speirs, a crew member on board CV30, (GREAT Britain). https://t.co/0nX2H71V5X pic.twitter.com/sfsH6s6EnM — The Clipper Race (@ClipperRace) November 18, 2017

Mr Speirs was given a sea burial at his family's request, with a service led by his skipper Andy Burns.

Organisers call the Clipper Race "one of the biggest challenges of the natural world and an endurance test like no other".

Previous sailing experience is not required to enter the race but each of the 12 competing yachts has a fully qualified skipper on board.

The year-long event costs £49,000 to enter and is the brainchild of Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, the first person to sail solo non-stop around the world.

London company director Sarah Young, 40, died during the race in 2016 after falling overboard while sailing from China to Seattle.

And in 2015, Andrew Ashman, 49, from Orpington in Kent, died after being hit by a rope while competing in the event.

Multiple World Record Sailor and Inspirational Speaker

Experience Adventure

From Red Bull Soap Box to Sailing World Records

A Multiple World Record sailor, Alex has raced around the world at the highest level for many years. He is most recently back from spending an amazing 75 days alone at sea, covering over 14,500 nautical miles, non-stop from Northern France, through the heat of the tropics and the storms of the Southern Ocean to Australia. During this challenging trip he had to deal with broken auto pilots, the day-to-day running of a high performance yacht in challenging conditions, and making the very difficult decision to head to Australia after damage to the mast which meant he couldn’t continue on this record attempt. Whilst hugely disappointing, it was another immense adventure, bringing out the very best in the human spirit to cope when things aren’t going your way.

Alex Alley’s Sailing Adventures

ADVENTURE PSYCHOLOGY

Going knowingly into the unknown.

ALEX LATEST ADVENTURE

Follow Alex’s Latest adventure.

Now skippering a Super-yacht, running various expeditions and co-author of Boat to Boardroom and The 7 Racing Rules of Winning, he also speaks at conferences and events about his experiences, runs workshops on dealing with adversity and is an associate with Adventure Psychology, helping individuals and companies go knowingly into the unknown.

Please get in touch to explore how to begin your own adventures. Let's Connect

Fresh From The Blog

• Cape Town at last March 8, 2024
• Pit Stop in Fernando de Noronha February 7, 2024
• HMS Oardacious win TWAC 2023 by over 100 miles January 17, 2024

Recent Comments

• February 2024
• January 2024
• February 2022

British Round the World Yachtsman and co author of Boat to Boardroom, Alex Alley is also an Adventure Psychology practitioner. As well as having three sailing world records, in 2019 he sailed 14,500 miles and spent 75 days alone at sea whilst trying to break another world record, this time non-stop around the world.

© 2024 Alex Alley. All Rights Reserved.

• Weather Routing
• Expedition Management
• Champagne Hippy
• Red Bull Soap Box
• Live Life To The Full
• Sailing Records
• Adventure Psychology Model
• ABC Coping Model
• Coping With Covid
• Get in Touch
• Home – Landing Page

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Sailor Rescued At Sea After Dismasting During Round-The-World Race

Scott Neuman

India's Abhilash Tomy gestures on his boat Thuriya as he sets off from Les Sables d'Olonne Harbour on July 1 at the start of the solo around-the-world "Golden Globe Race" ocean race in which sailors compete without high technology aides such as GPS or computers. Jean-Francois Monier/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

India's Abhilash Tomy gestures on his boat Thuriya as he sets off from Les Sables d'Olonne Harbour on July 1 at the start of the solo around-the-world "Golden Globe Race" ocean race in which sailors compete without high technology aides such as GPS or computers.

A solo yachtsman whose sailboat was rolled and dismasted in an Indian Ocean storm during a round-the-world race, has been rescued four days after calling for help.

Abhilash Tomy , a 39-year-old commander in the Indian navy, was taken from his smashed boat, Thuriya, approximately 1,900 miles west of Australia by a French fisheries patrol boat.

Tomy rescued safely @nsitharaman @pmo @Australian_Navy @DefenceMinIndia @ggr2018official @SpokespersonMoD pic.twitter.com/G3z7mlLGu3 — SpokespersonNavy (@indiannavy) September 24, 2018

"Tomy was taken out of his yacht on a stretcher. He is conscious, and he is safe," an Indian navy spokesman Captain D.K. Sharma told reporters.

The Two-Way

Around the world in 42 days: frenchman sets new sailing record, man found after 137 days adrift in sailboat. and it's not his first rescue.

Tomy was participating in the Golden Globe non-stop, unassisted, round-the-world race, a revival of a famous 1968 race. Participants shun modern electronics, such as GPS, for navigation and instead use sextants and celestial navigation to find their position at sea.

In the original Golden Globe race, several participants were forced to quit, one refused to finish despite being in the lead and another died by suicide after stepping off his boat. Tomy's two-masted ketch is a replica of Suhaili, the boat that ultimately won the race.

Of the 18 sailors who entered this year's Golden Globe, Tomy and seven others have dropped out. One other boat was also dismasted in the same storm that damaged Tomy's.

The BBC reports that "Tomy was able to communicate using a texting unit, after his satellite phone was broken. He managed to send an initial message saying he has a severe back injury and was immobilised, unable to eat or drink."

Since the first report of Thuriya's dismasting on Friday, rescue efforts had been underway by India and other countries.

The Indian navy spokesman was quoted by NDTV as saying that Tomy sent a "ping" with his Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon, or EPIRB, when aircraft approached his position.

Correction Sept. 24, 2018

A previous version of this story used quotes from Golden Globe race organizers that were wrongly said to refer to Abhilash Tomy. The statements were in regard to a different sailor forced to drop out of the race.