A review by guarinous
A Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nichols

5.0

A Voyage for Madmen is a thrilling look at the Sunday Times Golden Globe solo sailing circumnavigation race and its nine participants. I read this book after reading "The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst", which fixates completely on Crowhurst's attempted deception in the race and eventual madness and suicide. After finishing that, I wanted to learn more about the race itself and the other competitors. Nichols' descriptions of the sailors trials through heavy seas, leaking boats, and unpredictable winds are genuinely terrifying in parts but I can't help but admiring those that persevered through it in times before GPS or modern electronics removed some of that unpredictability. I found Robin Knox-Johnston and Bernard Moitessier to be the most admirable for different reasons: Knox-Johnston for his obstinate determination to finish first, and Moitessier for the exact opposite: he sailed the fastest and would have won, but chose to continue sailing around the world again in a spiritual rejection of the commercialization he felt was happening of the sport. Perhaps the most tragic character (beyond the obvious Crowhurst) is Nigel Tetley, who perhaps would have finished but had to be rescued after his boat sank. Had he been more careful he could have gone on, but he was pushing the boat to the limits due to the perception that Crowhurst was hot on his heels, when in fact Crowhurst had never left the Atlantic and faked the majority of his positions.

Next up for me is Moitessier's take on the race, "The Long Way", which I'm sure is full of spiritual ruminations of the sea.