Brave men on a great sea adventure; Man was stepping on the moon, but the sailors from two dying empires still sought adventure on Earth, providing a Wirral author and yachtsman with stories of triumph and tragedy. David Charters reports.

Byline: David Charters

HE KNOWS the salted spray himself, this writer raised on high-sanded cliffs overlooking arugged coast - and he has felt the slap of puny, man-made boats on God's water, the billow of the sails, the sting of the unseen wind drawing tears from his eyes, leathered hands and yellow jackets, as, steadily, he has steered into many adventures.

For each departure from land to sea is an adventure, as Chris Eakin well knows. The swelling water, which looks so inviting on magazine photographs, is full of quirks and menace and secrets.

But his subject today stretches back, long before his own experiences as a yachtmaster, to extraordinary happenings, which gripped the nation through much of 1968 and 1969.

It was billed as the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, but it became a wider celebration of British eccentricity and derring-do, somehow surviving in a fast-changing world - though Gallic pride was represented by a philosopher armed with a catapult, who was in hot pursuit of "infinite truth", while a splash of Latin glamour was added by a Biblically-bearded Italian. His quest for glory was thwarted by a peptic ulcer.

At the time, Neil Armstrong was preparing for the mission, which lead to him scuffing his boots on the moon's surface and America triumphing in the Space Race with the "giant leap for mankind".

But back in Blighty, nine men were preparing for the first round-the-world yacht race, which would have journalists from old Fleet Street frothing with excitement and flashing cheque-books in a bid to sign exclusive deals with the extraordinary array of competitors. ITV and BBC news teams were also locked in fierce competition to find the best stories.

One man in particular, a doomed dreamer with high ambition and modest ability drew us all into his own tragedy and stirred the imaginations of the journalists.

Stories of the characters, who starred or at least featured in this bizarre event, have always enthralled Eakin, a reporter and a news editor on the Daily Post in the late 1980s, who now works as a journalist on the BBC News Channel.

All nine competitors were matched against the sea, but they were also exposed to long periods of self-examination, searching deep into themselves, seeing their frailties as never before.

This side of the story appeals at least as much to the writer in Eakin as the race itself. How does the individual emerge, or in one case fail to emerge, from such a trial?

It is a splendid subject for his first book, A Race Too Far. But this morning, the old boy of Calday Grange Grammar School, Wirral, is remembering his own experiences as a sailor.

"I learned to sail with the Fourth Heswall Sea Scouts," he says. Chris, of course, was very familiar with the local coast, its sandy cliffs and the wild, seaweed-squelching beaches, darkened by the wings of more birds than you would find in an ornithologist's notebook.

AT THE age of 12, he moved to Heswall with his father, George, a civil engineer, his late mother, Val, and their other sons, Michael, 51, now chief executive with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and Clive, 45, a BBC local radio journalist in the Midlands.

Chris, 47, spent his early childhood in Helen's Bay, near Belfast, and then had a short spell in a house on the edge of the shore near Barcelona. The sea had been in his spirit for a long time. But it was in Wirral that it matured.

"We sailed at the West Kirby Marine Lake and at Bala in North Wales," he recalls. "Then I graduated to wind-surfing on the marine lake. Before I started on Daily Post shifts in the morning, I would go sailing on the marine lake. I even wind-surfed on Christmas Day. When I was younger, I used to walk out to Hilbre Island a lot. The whole west Wirral coast is fantastic."

All this eventually led to Chris, who now lives in London, passing the exams and practical tests to become a yachtmaster. He now sails regularly in the English Channel with his wife Deborah, a GP They have a pounds 150,000, 34ft Hallberg Rassy yacht called Blue Lady These experiences helped him write the story of nine sailors, their wives and families and what happened to them on an epic adventure.

By today's standards the organisation was haphazard. The competitors were permitted to start from Britain between June 1 and October 31,1968. The prize would be awarded to the first person to complete a non-stop, single-handed circumnavigation of the world - with a separate pounds 5,000 prize for the fastest round-the-world sailor.

Robin Knox-Johnston, who spent part of his childhood in Lower Heswall, on his 32ft ketch, Suhaili, won both, as the only competitor to finish the 30,000 nautical miles. It took him 10 months.

Yet most experts thought that the Frenchman, Bernard Moitessier, was the finest sailor in the race. Indeed, he probably was, but he was also a philosopher, a man of singular passion, who felt that the ideal of sailing alone against the elements was being sullied by the event's competitive nature.

So, when he reached Cape Horn, instead of turning round and heading for the finish in his 39ft ketch Joshua, he continued on a solo mission - much to the sorrow of his wife and three children.

Yet his solo voyage and rejection of material values turned him into a French hero, if a miserable husband and father.

"It was the wacky race of its time. The people who got into that single-handed, long distance sailing were always eccentric," says Chris. "Suddenly this event brought them together in a chaotic, very rushed way Several had been planning to do it in a few years, after the necessary training, but the Sunday Times ambushed them all into this race and into setting off as quickly as they could.

It was a different era. The question was not - who is going to do this, but was it physically possible?

THAT is why they could start off at different times. The thing was - go as soon as you can and finish as soon as you can. The prize for the fastest time was brought in to sustain public interest in the event. It kept the story going.

"Behind it were two countries, Britain and France, which had lost their empires, but still sought glory"

Sir Francis Chichester, who in 1966 had sailed around the world single-handed, inspired the event, but he had stopped in Australia. The new idea was to do it nonstop.

Of all the competitors, most armchair Britons were attracted to Donald Crowhurst, Liberal councillor from Teignmouth, who had developed an advanced method of electronic navigation. But the preparation of his 40ft trimaran, Teignmouth Electron, was far too rushed and this, coupled with his limited sailing experience, signalled disaster.

However, for a while it seemed that he was doing very well. "There are several extraordinary stories, which came out of the Golden Globe Race, but his is the most sensational," says Chris. "He did a third of the route and got down to the Roaring Forties, but then started going round in a circle."

He was also deceiving everyone by broadcasting messages, which exaggerated his progress. "He realised that he was not going to be fast enough and that his boat probably wouldn't survive the storms of the Southern Ocean, "says Chris.

His deception was sure to be discovered and it seems that this realisation broke his mind and his heart, as he floundered hopelessly, lost in the ocean, committing his increasingly strange thoughts to paper, before jumping overboard. "He was no fool," says Chris.

"But his thoughts were written over a week or so in a manic manner. It's pretty crazy stuff about cosmic beings and his almost becoming a greater being and transcending into a god. It's bonkers. He lost it, but there is intelligence within it."

Sadly, another Briton, Nigel Tetley, had believed Crowhurst and unnecessarily hurried his 40ft trimaran, Victress. She capsized while in the lead, with just 1,100 nautical miles to go. Two years later he hanged himself from a tree in Dover.

So with style and respect, Chris has written of brave men, philosophers and dreamers from another time, who set out on a great adventure.

A Race Too Far by Chris Eakin is published on April 2 by Ebury Press at pounds 16.99.

I learned to sail with the Fourth Heswall Sea Scouts

The brave souls taking part

THE competitors in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Yacht Race were: John Ridgway, British, sailing English Rose IV, retired from race; Chay Blyth, British, sailing Dytiscus III, retired; Robin Knox-Johnston, British, sailing Suhaili, winner; Loick Fougeron, French, sailing Captain Browne, retired; Bernard Moitessier, French, sailing Joshua, retired; Bill King, British, sailing Galway Blazer II, retired; Nigel Tetley, British, sailing Victress, sank; Alex Carozzo, Italian, sailing Gancia Americano, retired; and Donald Crowhurst, British, sailing Teignmouth Electron, died.

CAPTION(S):

Author and BBC news presenter, Chris Eakin; A Race Too Far - Eakin has written of brave men, philosophers and dreamers from another time, who set out on a great adventure Robin Knox-Johnston, who spent part of his childhood in Lower Heswall; Robin Knox- Johnston, who spent part of his childhood in Lower Heswall