The Yachting Year 2018

58 | THE YACHTING YEAR 2018

Editor of Classic Boat, Rob Peake, on what he is

looking forward to in the classic world in 2018

THE MERCY

Early in 2015 I had an email from a film production com-

pany requesting images from the 1968 Earls Court Boat

Show. Classic Boat has an extensive archive of images (and

other incredible yachting memorabilia going back some

time) and it turned out we could help. More importantly,

the email gave rise to interesting news. It had come from a

company making a new film about the Donald Crowhurst

story. This, in case you don’t know one of the most incred-

ible stories in sailing, is the tale of the 1968 Sunday Times

Golden Globe Race, which Robin Knox-Johnston won and

nobody else finished, Crowhurst undertaking a famous

mid-ocean deception.

The film is to be called The Mercy after Crowhurst’s

oft-quoted final jottings in his logbook on Teignmouth

Electron, and stars Colin Firth. There have been gripping

books and documentaries about this fascinating and har-

rowing story, and I hope a big budget adaptation will treat

the subject with sensitivity. It will be released by

StudioCanal on February 9, 2018, in the UK.

GOLDEN GLOBE RACE 2018

The 1968 Golden Globe Race took such a heavy toll on its

participants, that one might ask why someone would want

to go through the experience themselves.

When a re-run of the solo, non-stop circumnavigation

was proposed, however, to mark the original event’s 50th

anniversary, places were over-subscribed within weeks.

The new event will recreate some of the atmosphere of

the old, insisting on yachts of the era, period navigation

software (sextant and dividers) and it bans modern gizmos

apart from a GPS beacon, which will be inaccessible to the

sailors, but visible to us ashore, following the event.

A fascinating array of sailing talent new and old will

assemble on the start line in Plymouth in June, including

Jean-Luc van den Heede, aged 72, who has sailed five

times around the world solo already. Incredibly, but totally

in keeping with the original race, the fleet will also number

people who were sailing novices when they signed up.

How will they fare? It’ll make interesting viewing.

The race starts from Les Sables d’Olonne on 1 July.

JOSHUA

To add another strand to the story of the Golden Globe

Race 2018, events organised around the French start in

July will include the presence in the UK of four historic

yachts from the era – Robin Knox-Johnston’s Suhaili and

Bernard Moitessier’s Joshua, both of which took part in

the original 1968 race, as well as Alec Rose’s Lively Lady

and Francis Chichester’s Gipsy Moth IV. Suhaili, Lively Lady

and Gipsy Moth IV are relatively common and much-loved

sights in British waters, but Joshua will be new to many

• indeed, many British sailors won’t have known she still
  existed. On the French side of the Channel, she’s a national
  institution, kept in seaworthy condition by a team of en-
  thusiasts who use her to take younsters and newcomers to
  sea. She’s not the prettiest boat afloat, but the DIY nature
  of her assemblage, undertaken by Bernard Moitessier on
  almost no budget, remains. Joshua will be cruising around
  the UK over the summer of 2018 and there’ll be chances
  to get aboard. I’ll be one of those queueing up. Details in
  Classic Boat nearer the time.

WORKING BOATS

Falmouth Classics regatta was founded in 1987, the same

year Classic Boat first hit the shelves, at the start of what is

now called ‘the classic revival’. Falmouth’s regular regatta

fleet in some ways mirrors how the classic scene has de-

veloped in that time – particularly the growth of the pilot

cutter. Back in the late 1980s, these former working boats,

renowned for their seaworthiness, were relatively thin on

the ground, sailed by the few enthusiasts who could still

remember how to rig a deadeye. Three decades on, at the

30th anniversary Falmouth Classics regatta held in baking

heat in June 2017, the working boat fleet was a key part

of the event, pilot cutters new and old providing a regatta

flavour that you don’t see everywhere.

The West Country is still, as it was generations ago,

a hotbed of working boat expertise, and among those

experts is one Luke Powell, who with wife Joanna has

recently teamed up with Brian Pain, the owner of the

Thames Barge Lady of the Lea. After some years of work-

ing with the Faversham Creek Trust and shipwright Simon

THE

YEAR AHEAD FOR

CLASSIC SAILORS

Colin Firth is Donald

Crowhurst in Studio

Canal’s The Mercy

TYY4 Year ahead Classic Boat.indd 58 04/12/2017 15:23