A voyage for madmen / Peter Nichols.

"It lay like a gauntlet thrown down: to sail non-stop around the world. In 1968, no one had ever done it; no one knew if it could be done, until nine ordinary men - six Englishmen, two Frenchmen and an Italian - set out to try. They were neither sportsmen nor yachtsmen - one didn't even know how to sail. Only one of the nine crossed the finishing line after ten months at sea. The rest encountered despair, sublimity, madness and even death."--Back cover.