Donald Crowhurst

Donald Crowhurst: The Man Who Sailed Around The World Without Leaving The Atlantic

I Wrote this essay for a college course on Project Management. The guidelines stated we had to write about a project that failed.


Donald Crowhurst Was a British Businessman and amateur sailor who died while competing in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, a race to be the first to sail single headedly non-stop around the world. Faced with mounting financial and technical challenges prior to the start of the race Crowhurst departed from Teignmouth, Devon, on the last day permitted by the rules: 31 October 1968. From the beginning of the race Crowhurst realised that his boat was not suitable for the race and began reporting false positions, in an attempt to appear to circumnavigate the world without actually doing so. Four months into the race Crowhurst’s boat was found drifting in the north Atlantic with no one aboard. Evidence from his logbooks indicates that his race ended in insanity and apparent suicide (Hall and Tomalin 1970).

March 8, 2011