Showing results for "History" in Sailing

Sailing on a boat by yourself out at sea and out of sight of land can be exhilarating or terrifying, compelling or tedious - sometimes it can be all of these things just in one morning. It is an adventure at odds with our normal, sociable lives, carried out floating on a medium wholly inimical to our existence. But the deep ocean is also a remarkable place on which to think. Richard King's enormously engaging and curious book is about the debt we owe to solo sailors: women and men, young and old, who have set out alone.

Off the Deep End is the first detailed study of the effect on sanity that the vastness, loneliness and inestimable power of the sea has always had on sailors' sanity, confusing the senses and making rational thought difficult. Eminently listenable, it explores accounts that span the centuries, from desperate stories of shipwreck and cannibalism in the Age of Sail, to inexplicable multiple murders, to Donald Crowhurst's suicide in the middle of the 1968 solo Golden Globe Race.