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BY MAGGIE SCOTT

It’s not the rolling waves in the fascinating documentary “Deep Water” that will make you feel sick. It’s the sense of utter folly and looming disaster that will gnaw at you as the story of Donald Crowhurst unfolds on the screen.

As Rudyard Kipling wrote in his poem, “The Sea and the Hills,” Who hath desired the Sea? Her menaces swift as her mercies?” Crowhurst desired the sea and desired something more: fame. Like so many in the island nation of Britain, the lore and lure of the sea gripped him in 1967 on hearing of his country’s latest maritime achievement: solo circumnavigation of the globe by Francis Chichester.

This feat inspires the next challenge sponsored by the Sunday Times newspaper in 1968: solo circumnavigation, non-stop. Five-thousand pounds to the swiftest and a golden “globe” trophy to the first to return to port.
Considered an endurance test “of all time” it will take ten months of solitude over 33,000 miles. Crowhurst, with a wife and three children, is essentially a “weekend sailor.”

Described by his wife as a “vigorous, lively person” and by Crowhurst to his future wife as an “impossible” man, he makes his living crafting navigational aides. With no practical experience at extreme risk-taking, and fortified by the daring-do of Kipling stories, Crowhurst forges ahead with plans to join the nine other men launching themselves into the history books.

But, his preparations drag and snag on inexperience and the pressure of a sea-faring deadline: to avoid impossible sailing conditions at certain points in the journey, boats must launch by the last day of October. Footage of Crowhurst, in the final days before setting sail, show a man whose face is etched with pain and uncertainty.

In gripping present-day hindsight, family, friends, colleagues and competitors appear before the camera of directors Louise Osmond and Jerry Rothwell and talk about a man who literally threw caution to the wind and sailed over the horizon, chased by demons of both fortune and financial ruin.

Wife, Clare, talks about the what-if’s; son, Simon, recalls the young boy who listened to the gales the night of his father’s departure and realized the awful perils he faced; friend Ron Winspear echoes the poem by Katharine Mansfield, “A Little Boy’s Dream,” when he says this voyage was Donald’s:

To and fro, to and fro
In my little boat I go
Sailing far across the sea
All alone, just little me.

And the sea is big and strong
And the journey very long.
To and fro, to and fro
In my little boat I go.

On Crowhurst’s little boat are a 16 millimeter camera, a tape recorder and ship’s logs. These are woven into the narrative with ghostly effectiveness, particularly the entries made late in the trip, when months of isolation inspire near-ravings. This compelling tale of heroic folly never treads water. Rated PG for theme, language, smokes.
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