Peter Nichols · 2001 · sea

Peter Nichols's account of the 1968 Golden Globe, the first race to sail alone non-stop around the world. Nine men started, at intervals, from ports along the English coast. Four never left the Atlantic, one sank, one won, one sailed past the finish to Tahiti, and one faked a log for months and then stepped off his boat in mid-ocean.

1. 1
   Falmouth

   Nine men leave between June and October 1968 from Falmouth, Plymouth and Teignmouth, under a rule saying only that you must start and finish at a British port - among them a merchant officer, a mystic, and an engineer.

2. 2
   The Cape of Good Hope

   The first of the three great capes, and the point where the field thins. Ridgway and Fougeron are already out, King is dismasted and Blyth retires here - and it becomes a race between three boats none of which are in good order.

3. 3
   Cape Leeuwin

   Knox-Johnston passes the second cape with his self-steering gone, his water tanks fouled and his hull leaking, sewing his own sails and setting his own bones - and no way to tell anyone where he is.

4. 4
   Cape Horn

   Moitessier rounds the Horn in the lead and Knox-Johnston well behind but still afloat - and Tetley, in a trimaran nobody expected to survive the Southern Ocean, is coming up fast enough to make it a race again.

5. 5
   The South Atlantic

   Crowhurst never left the Atlantic. He circled off Brazil for months radioing false positions and keeping two logs, became briefly the apparent winner, then wrote two hundred pages of philosophy and went over the side.

6. 6
   Tahiti

   Moitessier, certain of the prize, slingshots a message onto a passing ship and keeps going east - round the Cape of Good Hope a second time and on to Tahiti, out of the race by choice and into the legend.

7. 7
   Falmouth

   Robin Knox-Johnston comes back into Falmouth on 22 April 1969, the only one of the nine to finish, after 312 days - and gives the prize money to Crowhurst's widow.