Voyage For Madmen

Specially republished to mark the 50th anniversary of the Golden Globe Race, A Voyage for Madmen is a fast-paced, utterly gripping account of what drives people to extraordinary endeavour in the face of life-threatening danger.

It lay like a gauntlet thrown down; to sail around the world alone and non-stop. No one had ever done it, no one knew if it could be done.

In 1968, nine men - six Englishmen, two Frenchmen and an Italian - set out to try, a race born of coincidence of their timing. One didn't even know how to sail. They had more in common with Captain Cook or Ferdinand Magellan than with the high-tech, extreme sailors of today, a mere forty years later. From the haunted, Nemo-esque Bernard Moitessier to the wildly complex Donald Crowhurst, Peter Nicholls juggles his cast of eccentrics with aplomb, fully embracing their absurdity and wild courage.

Often armed with little more than an Opinel knife, rudimentary radio and navigation equipment, and a store of the most basic canned supplies across 1968 nine very different men slipped out to sea to race each other, alone, around the globe. It was not the sea or the weather that determined the nature of their voyages but the men they were, and they were as different from one another as Scott from Amundsen.

Only one of the nine crossed the finishing line after ten months at sea. The rest encountered despair, sublimity, madness and even death.

Republished as 18 skippers recreate the historic race (beginning on 1st July 2018), this is an extraordinary tale of courage and endurance. Peppered with fascinating details about life at sea, it’s a book to be devoured breathlessly in one sitting. Peter Nichol's book is an incredible true story of the inaugural 1968 Golden Globe sailing race, truly A Voyage for Madmen.