Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
with the race. The celebratory dinner was postponed when news ar-
rived of the death of competitor Donald Crowhurst, who had jumped
overboard somewhere in the southern Atlantic and Knox-Johnson
presented his prize money to the appeal fund which was set up for
Crowhurst's family. Many of the yachting fraternity shared Moitessi-
er's instinct that there was something tawdry about turning the su-
preme test of seamanship into a competition. It was comparable to
organising a race up Everest.
But we live in a world in which marketing is king and, therefore,
as long as there is profit to be made from promoting major sporting
events, high profile competitions which capture the public imagin-
ation continue to be organised. The boat-building industry needs
exciting exploits to ensure sales to new generations of sportsmen
and pleasure yachtsmen. Money from big-business is vital to sustain
research and development, for today's ocean-going craft are the
products of high technology, equipped with sophisticated satellite
navigation gear, computers and communication apparatus. Nor is it
only the boats which attract investment. The courageous and skilled
men and women who sail them are, like all sporting stars, highly
bankable commodities. Publishers, newspaper editors and TV pro-
gramme planners compete with each other to sign them up. The last
quarter of the twentieth century, therefore, saw the establishment of
regular circumnavigation races - the Whitbread (later Whitbread/
Volvo) for fully manned yachts, single-handed contests such as the
British Oxygen, BT Global Challenge and Vendeóe Globe events. Com-
mercialism, with all the ambiguities it involves, has become an integ-
ral part of sailing, as of all sports.
That can create problems for competitors, who, unlike their
backers, are not motivated by money. Those men and women who
aspire to the highest accolades their chosen profession can bestow
are still driven by the same demons that propelled so many of the
mariners of the great age of circumnavigation. For them records ex-
