Tribute to Crowhurst, New Quay Inn, Teignmouth Donald Charles Alfred Crowhurst (1932 – July 1969) was a British inventor/entrepreneur, businessman and amateur sailor who disappeared while competing in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, a single-handed, round-the-world yacht race held in 1968–69. Soon after starting the race, his boat, the Teignmouth Electron, began taking on water. Crowhurst secretly abandoned the race while reporting false positions in an attempt to appear to complete a circumnavigation without actually doing so. His ship's logbooks, found after his disappearance, suggest that stress and associated psychological deterioration may have led to his apparent suicide. While contemporary reporting focussed on his fraudulent reports and emphasised his actions as a hoaxer or "con man", with the passage of time his story has tended to be reappraised as more of a maritime tragedy that acts a warning to others of the dangers of commencing a substantial sea voyage, certainly with initial (if misplaced) belief in technology and personal capacity to complete it, but without adequate preparation or properly tested equipment, as well as the danger of entering a potentially disastrous financial arrangement that (at least in theory) would see him lose everything should he not complete the race. Wikipedia
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