Donald Crowhurst

A former co-worker of mine is sailing around the world by himself. I heard this today and remembered a long-ago around-the-world solo boat race where one of the sailors faked his position, eventually going insane when he realized he might "win" and have to submit his doctored logs to close inspection.

Melissa and I went to a one-man opera about this story, and that helped me find the full story: "around the world boat race opera insane atlantic" works, but it's not as limiting as you might imagine. The racer's name was Donald Crowhurst, and here's his Wikipedia entry. At the opera, we bought A Voyage for Madmen, a book about all 9 sailors. Melissa dug it out of her bookshelf, and I added it to my soon-to-read queue.

Hopefully, my former co-worker won't suffer a similar fate. He recently completed a 37-day stretch in the South Pacific, all by himself. He's made of sterner stuff than I: I'm pretty sure that after a week or two of that life I'd be lecturing the fish on the appeal of steampunk for the modern computer lover.