Review: Nichols, A Voyage for Madmen

[truepenny]

A Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nichols

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Nichols, himself a single-handed yachtsman, does a great job of examining the voyages of all nine men; he focuses, logically, on the men who completed or came closest to completing the voyage--Robin Knox-Johnston (the winner); Nigel Tetley, whose boat sank under him; Bernard Moitessier, who abandoned the race to keep sailing; and of course Donald Crowhurst--but he's interested in everyone's story (he won my heart forever by telling me the names of all the yachts), and he's a good, vivid writer who understands how to capture the life of a small sailing boat. He also points to the history and community of solo circumnavigations and single-handed yachting in general--a context for the race that outsiders (e.g., Tomalin & Hall's excellent The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst) don't write about.



View all my reviews