In 1968, the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race set out to find the first person to sail solo, non-stop around the world, and nine amateur sailors took the bait. This film follows the race through archival footage, home movies, and interviews with surviving competitors and their families, but its center is Donald Crowhurst, a weekend sailor and struggling businessman who entered a boat that was not ready and a plan that was not sound. Trapped between financial ruin and the terror of the Southern Ocean, Crowhurst began faking his logbook, radioing false positions while actually drifting in the Atlantic, hoping to slip back into the fleet unnoticed near the finish. His wife Clare and his rivals, including eventual winner Robin Knox-Johnston, describe a race that quietly became a study in isolation and self-deception. Crowhurst's own trimaran, recovered empty in mid-Atlantic with his logbooks aboard, supplies the film's final, unresolved image.