The Long Way

"Yes. The extent to which you find solitude on a boat is almost unique, liking finding yourself in space. In 1966 Sir Francis Chichester had circumnavigated the world, stopping in Australia. The Sunday Times got hold of that and decided to make it a competition: Who will make the first non-stop circumnavigation of the world by boat? There were boats from 32 feet to 47 feet long. Nine men began, only one actually finished the race, and some even died on the way. It’s a mad story, really well articulated in a book called A Voyage for Madmen . But in this particular book, Moitessier is on this journey. He’s in first place. Everyone at home know the guys’ positions because they do radio updates. My father told me he was at home plotting the sailors’ points on a big world map. It’s a seven-month sail. Tension is building back in the UK. Everyone is listening. Moitessier is coming near the end, back to Plymouth, where it began. Then he decides not to go to Plymouth and he keeps on going. And he keeps going for three months more, ending up on Tahiti, having gone one-and-a-half times around the world. His account is written up in The Long Way. The actual winner of the race—because Moitessier didn’t go to the finish line—talks about this gruelling journey. But Moitessier’s account is a meditative experience in which he talks with porpoises and is guided by a seagull. He has a lot of wonderful realisations on the way. Hence him not reaching or finalising his journey in Plymouth, where he was about to get lots of money and become world famous. He thought: No, I don’t want to do it, because I want to “save my soul.” In the book he talks about how we have become our own slaves to society, and how we need to live in a more simple way. It’s a wonderful, meditative account of a mad, mad journey which is about the journey not the goal."