Interesting book, definitely a strange story that includes a lot of mystery and confusion. The writing isn't phenomenal, gets a bit long and dry at times, but if you're curious about Donald Crowhurst and what resulted in his death at sea (or generally if you're interested in mental health, strange characters, sailing/travel, and mysteries) then you'll find it at least an interesting story.

Oh boy what a train wreck of a human and human-event. This poor self-decieving, fantasy-driven schmoe, spiraling out of control all by himself in the middle of the ocean in the middle of a race. Fascinating detective work to piece together what happened "out there".

I didn't know anything about sailing, until a few months ago. But then got fascinated by following the Vendee Globe and a friend turned me to this.

It's fun/frightening to learn about the way they had to sail in those days (especially compared with the modern weather/communication).

Crowhurst descend into madness is also quite spectacular, although I quite skimmed the last part, because it gets much to crazy for me.

I loved this book! I worked on a one-man opera years ago based on this story--the opera was awesome, BTW. But I've never read this book. I was reminded of it after reading _The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim_, which was a book I also enjoyed. What a feat of investigation the authors undertook, and they really hit it out of the park with the writing. Page-turner.

I was really struck by their compassion for Crowhurst. They say it themselves, but it's true--this stoery could very easily been "Man overcomes all odd" if Crowhurst had succeeded. I highly recommend this book.

I'm going to watch _Deep Water_ tomorrow.

The Donald Crowhurst story simultaneously quite mundane (a man who after being forced into a tough situation, starts cheating) and incredibly fantastic (just how elaborate the scheme turns out to be, some of the downright strange coincidences that forced the final outcome). The effort and research that went into reconstructing Crowhurt's voyage based on misleading radio messages and a combination of partially complete and doctored ship logs is amazing. The book is not only thorough, but also very objective — Crowhurst's ultimate fate can't be known with perfect certainty, but the authors establish what they think is the most reasonable conclusion and exhaustively list the supporting evidence for it. Other possibilities are considered as well, with each one dismissed with sound reasoning. The one negative I'll say is that the book might be a little _too_ thorough — I found myself wishing that they'd packed the story into half the length or so.

Part maritime disaster story, part Fortean mystery, part Greek tragedy, this unsettling book tells a terrifying story of what can happen to a person when every avenue of escape seems closed. The book quotes liberally from Crowhurst's own writings and recordings, allowing the reader to see the man's descent into deception, desperation, and, finally, insanity. And yet, I didn't feel like Crowhurst came across as a bad person by any stretch -- simply someone who bet on himself too many times, and couldn't bring himself to face what seemed like a ruinous failure (and, for my money, might well have been suffering from bipolar disorder even before his final journey). There were at least a dozen times when this story could have gone differently, to a happier, more mundane, conclusion, but the wheels turned in a different direction, leaving us with this oddly moving cautionary tale.

Also, that last page of Crowhurst's log is one of the most horrifyingly fascinating things I've ever read. Gives me shivers.

This book is very well researched and goes into a lot of depth. I found it interesting but I'm not that invested in the story so I felt there was a bit too much detail. It's not really criticism for the book itself, if you are interested in Crowhurst's story I think it's a great document. But for me as a casual reader who hadn't heared about the story before picking up the book (someone recommended it to me) the book drags on a bit too much.

Fascinating. Depressing. Worth the read.