BOOK · 1971
The Long Way
He was leading the first solo round-the-world race. He kept going. A book about why.
The 1968-69 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, sailed non-stop aboard Joshua - Moitessier's 39-foot steel ketch, named for Slocum, naturally. Leading the first solo non-stop round-the-world race on elapsed time, he slingshotted a message onto the deck of a passing ship - "because I am happy at sea and perhaps to save my soul" - turned away from the finish line, and kept sailing another three months to Tahiti. Ten months alone. 37,455 miles.
Written from his logbooks and published in French as La Longue Route in 1971; William Rodarmor's English translation (the Sheridan House edition) is the one to own.
The closest sailing literature gets to scripture - a book about what the sea does to a person's sense of what matters. Dangerous reading for anyone with a mortgage.