In 1968, the British news paper The Sunday Times proposed a non-stop solo sailing race around the world - something that had never been done before. The race offered a £5,000 prize for the fastest time, which was a good deal of money back then. Nine men came forward to accept the challenge. Each with different skill sets (almost unbelievably from none at all to very experienced), and each for their own personal reasons, some it would turn out, not related to the outcome of the race at all.

This documentary, available through Netflix, will haunt you for days in the telling of its tale. As I’m quite partial to sailing, I wondered if that had any bearing on how much the film lingered with me, but in talking with others that I have shared the film with, that’s not the case.

I don’t want to spoil the story for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but I will tell you that the idea of even attempting to sail around either the Cape of Good Hope off of Africa’s southernmost tip, or Cape Horn off the bottom of South America was nearly insane for any of these men to try, particularly in the types of rather small vessels they used. In the end, only one man completes the contest - though another drops out near the finish, only to do the entire run around the world a second time, and more!

But the focus of the film is Donald Crowhurst. A weekend sailor at best, he stakes everything he has on the race, desperately trying to turn his family’s financial struggles around. In the end, life seems to mock his pitiful efforts. And though he starts out determined that he can do this thing, he ends up out of his mind, and in a bizarre twist of fate, completely out of luck as well.

The film uses mostly actual footage of the race, taken by the media, and by the sailors themselves, to tell this story - one that I don’t think I’ll ever get out of my head completely. It’s the hopes of the common man, as well as the sometimes random twists in our journey that puts all of our lives precariously in the balance. I’ve already watched it twice through, and will probably see it again and again.

Preview:
Deep Water