By Peter Nichols
Published by Profile Books (2001)
This is also a cracking read about the ill-fated race of 1968, but with a difference. The author very cleverly dovetails all the sailors in the race and follows them as they drop out, are wrecked or die.
As the author himself graphically puts it: ‘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 10 months at sea. The rest encountered despair, sublimity, madness and death.’
The book was a finalist in the William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 2001.