This terrific documentary recounts a battle against the odds much like Touching the Void, but it ends very differently. In 1968, eight of the world's best yachtsmen set out to win the prize for the first solo, non-stop, round-the-globe circumnavigation. The ninth is an inexperienced Englishman and weekend yachtsman called Donald Crowhurst, who quickly finds himself in trouble. What follows is an incredible story of a man trapped between the deep blue sea and a series of self-made blunders.
Directors Louise Osmond and Jerry Rothwell quickly sketch Crowhurst's dilemma. Mortgaging his house and staking everything on this race, he's hailed as "the dark horse of the sea" by the newspapers. The public love an underdog, but Crowhurst's voyage begins ominously when the champagne bottle cracked against the hull doesn't break first (or second, or third) time. At sea, his self-designed boat falls apart, he's battered by bad weather and he succumbs to despair. Finally he decides to fake his journey, hiding out off the coast of South America for several months. Faced with the empty vastness of the ocean, madness sets in.
"A DEEPLY MOVING DOCUMENTARY"
Deep Water recreates Crowhurst's ill-fated trip using news footage, his journals, tape recordings and - a great coup - the 16mm footage that he shot on deck. The result is a deeply moving documentary, buoyed up by teary interviews with Crowhurst's family, friends and rivals. Stories celebrating heroic journeys are commonplace, but this is a sobering, anti-heroic tale of an ordinary man who set out to attempt the extraordinary... and failed through a cruel combination of bad luck and bad judgement.
Deep Water (2006)
