When Donald Crowhurst, a 36-year-old ex-army electrical engineer, announced his entry into the 1968 Golden Globe, a non-stop, single-handed yacht race around the world, he had little sailing experience.
He realised that his under-equipped yacht couldn't complete the journey, but to give up would mean bankruptcy and shame.
So he decided to cheat. Knowing that his boat would never survive the rough Southern Ocean, he decided to sail across the Atlantic to the coast of South America, where he would wait for the other competitors to catch up.
He kept two log books, one recording his actual journey and the other his fabricated one.
After spending months in solitude, Crowhurst's sanity gave way, and he spent 150 hours in a writing frenzy, creating a 25,000-word revelation of angry gibberish. Finally, he stepped into the Atlantic and disappeared. As a confessionary final act, Crowhurst had deliberately left proof of his deception for the world to find.
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