Bernard Moitessier · 1971 · sea
Bernard Moitessier's account of the 1968 Golden Globe, the first solo non-stop race round the world. Ten months at sea in a steel ketch called Joshua, and with the race his to win he kept going instead - past the finish, round the Cape of Good Hope a second time, and on to Tahiti. Thirty-seven thousand miles without once touching land.
- 1Plymouth
He sails on 23 August 1968, months after slower boats, in a forty-foot steel ketch he built himself and named for Joshua Slocum - no radio transmitter he trusts, no self-steering he did not make, and no intention of stopping.
- 2The Cape of Good Hope
Off the Cape by 20 October, and passing film canisters to a freighter by slingshot rather than going near a port - the first of the three great capes, and the first sign that he prefers the sea to what is waiting at the end of it.
- 3Cape Leeuwin
Across the Indian Ocean in the roaring forties, pitchpoled once and knocked down more than once, past the south-west corner of Australia in December - and by now writing about albatrosses more than about the race.
- 4Cape Horn
Round the Horn in February 1969 in the lead, with only the Atlantic between him and the prize - and instead of turning north for Plymouth he holds east, into a south-easterly gale, and keeps going.
- 5The Cape of Good Hope
He slingshots a message onto a ship in Table Bay: he is continuing to the Pacific islands because he is happy at sea and perhaps to save his soul - and rounds the Cape of Good Hope for the second time in one voyage.
- 6Cape Leeuwin
A second crossing of the Indian Ocean and a second Cape Leeuwin, nearly two-thirds of the way round the world again - the longest non-stop passage ever sailed, and undertaken by a man who has simply declined to finish.
- 7Tahiti
He anchors at Tahiti on 21 June 1969 after ten months alone, having sailed 37,455 miles and given up a world record and five thousand pounds - and the book is his explanation, which is mostly about birds and water.