The Sunday Times Golden Globe Race was a non-stop, single-handed, round-the-world yacht race, held in 1968–1969, and was the first non-stop round-the-world yacht race. The race was controversial due to the failure of eight of nine competitors to finish the race and because of the apparent suicide of one entrant, Donald Crowhurst; however, it ultimately led to the founding of the BOC Challenge and Vendée Globe round-the-world races, both of which continue to be successful and popular.
The race was sponsored by the British Sunday Times newspaper and was designed to capitalise on a number of individual round-the-world voyages which were already being planned by various sailors; for this reason, there were no qualification requirements, and competitors were offered the opportunity to join and permitted to start at any time between 1 June and 31 October 1968. The Golden Globe trophy was offered to the first person to complete an unassisted, non-stop single-handed circumnavigation of the world via the great capes, and a separate £5,000 prize was offered for the fastest single-handed circumnavigation.
Nine sailors started the race; four retired before leaving the Atlantic Ocean. Of the five remaining, Chay Blyth, who had set off with absolutely no sailing experience, sailed past the Cape of Good Hope before retiring; Nigel Tetley sank with to go while leading; Donald Crowhurst, who, in desperation, attempted to fake a round-the-world voyage to avoid financial ruin, began to show signs of mental illness, and then committed suicide; and Bernard Moitessier, who rejected the philosophy behind a commercialised competition, abandoned the race while in a strong position to win and kept sailing non-stop until he reached Tahiti after circling the globe one and a half times. Robin Knox-Johnston was the only entrant to complete the race, becoming the first man to sail single-handed and non-stop around the world. He was awarded both prizes, and later donated the £5,000 to a fund supporting Crowhurst's family.
Genesis of the race
Long-distance single-handed sailing has its beginnings in the nineteenth century, when a number of sailors made notable single-handed crossings of the Atlantic. The first single-handed circumnavigation of the world was made by Joshua Slocum, between 1895 and 1898, and many sailors have since followed in his wake, completing leisurely circumnavigations with numerous stopovers. However, the first person to tackle a single-handed circumnavigation as a speed challenge was Francis Chichester, who, in 1960, had won the inaugural Observer Single-handed Trans-Atlantic Race (OSTAR).
In 1966, Chichester set out to sail around the world by the clipper route, starting and finishing in England with a stop in Sydney, in an attempt to beat the speed records of the clipper ships in a small boat. His voyage was a great success, as he set an impressive round-the-world time of nine months and one daywith 226 days of sailing timeand, soon after his return to England on 28 May 1967, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. Even before his return, however, a number of other sailors had turned their attention to the next logical challengea non-stop single-handed circumnavigation of the world.
Plans laid
In March 1967, a 28-year-old British merchant marine officer, Robin Knox-Johnston, realised that a non-stop solo circumnavigation was "about all there's left to do now". Knox-Johnston had a wooden ketch, Suhaili, which he and some friends had built in India to the William Atkin Eric design; two of the friends had then sailed the boat to South Africa, and in 1966 Knox-Johnston had single-handedly sailed her the remaining to London.
Knox-Johnston was determined that the first person to make a single-handed non-stop circumnavigation should be British, and he decided that he would attempt to achieve this feat. To fund his preparations he went looking for sponsorship from Chichester's sponsor, the British Sunday Times. The Sunday Times was by this time interested in being associated with a successful non-stop voyage but decided that, of all the people rumoured to be preparing for a voyage, Knox-Johnston and his small wooden ketch were the least likely to succeed. Knox-Johnston finally arranged sponsorship from the Sunday Mirror.
Several other sailors were interested. Bill King, a former Royal Navy submarine commander, built a junk-rigged schooner, Galway Blazer II, designed for heavy conditions. He was able to secure sponsorship from the Express newspapers. John Ridgway and Chay Blyth, a British Army captain and sergeant, had rowed a boat across the Atlantic Ocean in 1966. They independently decided to attempt the non-stop sail, but despite their rowing achievement were hampered by a lack of sailing experience. They both made arrangements to get boats, but ended up with entirely unsuitable vessels, boats designed for cruising protected waters and too lightly built for Southern Ocean conditions. Ridgway managed to secure sponsorship from The People newspaper.
One of the most serious sailors considering a non-stop circumnavigation in late 1967 was the French sailor and author Bernard Moitessier. Moitessier had a custom-built steel ketch, Joshua, named after Slocum, in which he and his wife Françoise had sailed from France to Tahiti. They had then sailed her home again by way of Cape Horn, simply because they wanted to go home quickly to see their children. He had already achieved some recognition based on two successful books which he had written on his sailing experiences. However, he was disenchanted with the material aspect of his famehe believed that by writing his books for quick commercial success he had sold out what was for him an almost spiritual experience. He hit upon the idea of a non-stop circumnavigation as a new challenge, which would be the basis for a new and better book.
The birth of the race By January 1968, word of all these competing plans was spreading. The Sunday Times, which had profited to an unexpected extent from its sponsorship of Chichester, wanted to get involved with the first non-stop circumnavigation, but had the problem of selecting the sailor most likely to succeed. King and Ridgway, two likely candidates, already had sponsorship, and there were several other strong candidates preparing. "Tahiti" Bill Howell, an Australian cruising sailor, had made a good performance in the 1964 OSTAR, Moitessier was also considered a strong contender, and there may have been other potential circumnavigators already making preparations.
The Sunday Times did not want to sponsor someone for the first non-stop solo circumnavigation only to have them beaten by another sailor, so the paper hit upon the idea of a sponsored race, which would cover all the sailors setting off that year. To circumvent the possibility of a non-entrant completing his voyage first and scooping the story, they made entry automatic: anyone sailing single-handed around the world that year would be considered in the race.
This still left them with a dilemma in terms of the prize. A race for the fastest time around the world was a logical subject for a prize, but there would obviously be considerable interest in the first person to complete a non-stop circumnavigation, and there was no possibility of persuading the possible candidates to wait for a combined start. The Sunday Times therefore decided to award two prizes: the Golden Globe trophy for the first person to sail single-handed, non-stop around the world; and a £5,000 prize () for the fastest time.
This automatic entry provision had the drawback that the race organisers could not vet entrants for their ability to take on this challenge safely. This was in contrast to the OSTAR, for example, which in the same year required entrants to complete a solo 500-nautical mile (930 km) qualifying passage. The one concession to safety was the requirement that all competitors must start between 1 June and 31 October, in order to pass through the Southern Ocean in summer.
To make the speed record meaningful, competitors had to start from the British Isles. However Moitessier, the most likely person to make a successful circumnavigation, was preparing to leave from Toulon, in France. When the Sunday Times went to invite him to join the race, he was horrified, seeing the commercialisation of his voyage as a violation of the spiritual ideal which had inspired it. A few days later, Moitessier relented, thinking that he would join the race and that if he won, he would take the prizes and leave again without a word of thanks. In typical style, he refused the offer of a free radio to make progress reports, saying that this intrusion of the outside world would taint his voyage; he did, however, take a camera, agreeing to drop off packages of film if he got the chance.
The race declared
The race was announced on 17 March 1968, by which time King, Ridgway, Howell (who later dropped out), Knox-Johnston, and Moitessier were registered as competitors. Chichester, despite expressing strong misgivings about the preparedness of some of the interested parties, was to chair the panel of judges.
Four days later, British electronics engineer Donald Crowhurst announced his intention to take part. Crowhurst was the manufacturer of a modestly successful radio navigation aid for sailors, who impressed many people with his apparent knowledge of sailing. With his electronics business failing, he saw a successful adventure, and the attendant publicity, as the solution to his financial troublesessentially the mirror opposite of Moitessier, who saw publicity and financial rewards as inimical to his adventure.
Crowhurst planned to sail in a trimaran. These boats were starting to gain a reputation, still very much unproven, for speed, along with a darker reputation for unseaworthiness; they were known to be very stable under normal conditions, but extremely difficult to right if knocked over, for example by a rogue wave. Crowhurst planned to tackle the deficiencies of the trimaran with a revolutionary self-righting system, based on an automatically inflated air bag at the masthead. He would prove the system on his voyage, then go into business manufacturing it, thus making trimarans into safe boats for cruisers.
By June, Crowhurst had secured some financial backing, essentially by mortgaging the boat, and later his family home. Crowhurst's boat, however, had not yet been built; despite the lateness of his entry, he pressed ahead with the idea of a custom boat, which started construction in late June. Crowhurst's belief was that a trimaran would give him a good chance of the prize for the fastest circumnavigation, and with the help of a wildly optimistic table of probable performances, he even predicted that he would be first to finishdespite a planned departure on 1 October.
The race
The start (1 June to 28 July) Given the design of the race, there was no organised start; the competitors set off whenever they were ready, over a period of several months. On 1 June 1968, the first allowable day, John Ridgway sailed from Inishmore, Ireland, in his weekend cruiser English Rose IV. Just a week later, on 8 June, Chay Blyth followed suitdespite having absolutely no sailing experience. On the day he set sail, he had friends rig the boat Dytiscus for him and then sail in front of him in another boat to show him the correct manoeuvres.
Knox-Johnston got underway from Falmouth soon after, on 14 June. He was undisturbed by the fact that it was a Friday, contrary to the common sailors' superstition that it is bad luck to begin a voyage on a Friday. Suhaili, crammed with tinned food, was low in the water and sluggish, but the much more seaworthy boat soon started gaining on Ridgway and Blyth.