A Voyage For Madmen

Published to coincide with the Golden Globe Race's 50th AnniversaryIt 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. 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.

Peter Nichols is the author of the bestselling novel The Rocks, and the international bestsellers A Voyage for Madmen (finalist for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year), Evolution's Captain, and three other books of fiction, memoir, and non-fiction. His novel Lodestar was nominated for the Dublin IMPAC literary award. He has taught creative writing at a number of universities, including Georgetown University, Bowdoin College, New York University in Paris, and Antioch University Los Angeles. Before turning to writing full time, he held a 100 ton USCG Ocean Operator's licence and was a professional yacht delivery skipper for 10 years. He has also worked in advertising in London, as a screenwriter in Los Angeles, been a shepherd in Wales, and sailed alone in a small boat across the Atlantic.