Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford - The Philosopher and the Handyman: The Race Around the World - Part 1

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

Who will be the first to sail non-stop around the world? In 1968, The Sunday Times announces a trophy and a cash prize for the winner, and the Golden Globe Race is on. Leading the charge are Robin Knox-Johnston, an old-fashioned British patriot, and Bernard Moitessier, an enigmatic French philosopher. As monstrous seas and deadly gales close in, the difference between victory and disaster will come down to just one word.  For a full list of show notes, see timharford.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-I-Hart. Pushkin. On a warm summer's day, somewhere near the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Africa, Robin Knox Johnston puts on a mask and a snorkel and jumps from the side of his yacht into a calm sea. It sounds idyllic.

But Knox Johnston isn't diving for fun. He's investigating why his boat has been leaking. You expect some water in the bilge, but not this much. He's been having to run the pumps twice a day. Five feet below the waterline. He sees the problem. Two wooden planks are coming slightly apart. A long, thin gap has opened up between them.

As the boat bobs gently in the ocean, the gap opens and closes. Opens and closes. It's no big deal. Every boat needs patching up from time to time. In an ideal world, Knox Johnston would simply, have the boat lifted out of water when he's next at port and fill the gap with corking cotton, picture a thick piece of string. But he can't head for a port, because Robin Knox Johnston

is competing for the Sunday Times Golden Globe. The year is 1968. The challenge, sail around the world, single-handed without stopping. It's never been done before. Knox Johnston will have to repair the gap right here in the middle of the sea, under water, on his own. But how? He ties a hammer to a rope and dangles it overboard. He twists a length of cotton, dives under the water, hammers it into the gap, and comes up for air. But by the time he dives back down, the cotton has worked. It looked its way loose.

After half an hour of fruitless effort, I climbed back on board and tried to think of some other way of doing the job. Knox Johnston expects his round-the-world voyage to take about ten months. He's barely a month in. So far, he sailed south from Britain past half of Africa. He still has to pass the rest of Africa and turn left into the southern ocean under Australia and New Zealand and round the bottom of South America,

the dreaded Cape Horn where waves can tower like skyscrapers. He can't do that with a gap between his planks. He drinks a coffee, smokes a cigarette, and thinks. What if he sows the cotton to a long strip of canvas? I gave it a coating of Stockholm time, and then forced copper tacks through the canvas about six inches apart. He'll hammer in the tacks so the canvas holds the cotton in place,

then cover the canvas with a sheet of copper to stop it ripping loose. But just as he's about to dive in again, he sees a dark, grey shape under the surface near to the boat. A shark. Good job he noticed. I got out my rifle, aimed at the shape, and squeezed the trigger. I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to Cautionary Tales. Sailing around the world single-handed was nothing new. It had first been done in the 19th century,

though with lots of stops along the way to fix up problems, get supplies, and enjoy some human company. In 1967, a British sailor completed a... solo round the world trip with just one stop in Australia. That had never been done before, and it caught the imagination of the British newspapers. Over breakfast in the Knox Johnston household, Robin's dad wondered when someone would try to sail round the world without stopping at all. That's about all there's left to do now, isn't it?

He casually remarked to Robin. He got up and left for the office. leaving me stirring a cup of coffee and thinking. That's about all there's left to do now. Kept turning in my mind. Robin Knox Johnston was a young man, just 28 years old, but he was no flower-powered child of the 60s. He was conventional, an officer with the British India Steam Navigation Company,

a churchgoer and a patriot. The thought of generations of Britons and their achievements always encourages me. Most nations have a book full of heroes, but I always feel that Britain has a greater share than most. As he stirs his coffee and contemplates the place in the history books that awaits the first person to sail non-stop around the world, a horrible thought preys on his mind. What if it's a Frenchman? That would be galling? By rights, a Britain should do it first. And, well, why not him?

Knox Johnston was an experienced sailor. He already had a boat. He'd had it built in India when based there with his work. It'd seen a design he liked and sent off to a British company for the plans, but there'd been a mix-up, and they'd sent him plans for a different boat, more old-fashioned and slow. Still, this design.

looked solid and reliable, so Knox Johnston shrugged and gave the plans to his Indian boat builders. Solid, reliable, a bit old-fashioned. Quite by accident, Robin Knox Johnston had ended up with a boat that was very much like him. He'd sailed it from India back to England. Now he began to wander if he could sail it around the world on his own non-stop. Other sailors were also asking themselves, Could I? Editors at the British newspaper The Sunday Times had a bright idea.

They announced that the first person to sail non-stop around the world would win a trophy, the Sunday Times Golden Globe. If sailors were going to be competing anyway, why not attach the newspaper's name to it and get some free publicity? It was a stroke of much. marketing genius. But that wasn't all. As well as a trophy for the first person around the world, they announced a large cash prize for the fastest. That was clever. It would keep up public interest even after the trophy had been won. The rules were simple. Set off from a British port between June and

October of 1968. Whoever got back to their port of departure in the least amount of time, would get 5,000 pounds, maybe a quarter million dollars in today's money, not to be sniffed at. Robin Knox Johnston knew he hadn't a hope of winning the cash prize for being fastest. His boat was slow. But maybe he had a chance of being first, if he set off at the earliest possible moment right at the start of June. That was a risk.

Ideally, you wanted to time your journey so you'd be in the fearsome southern ocean during the southern summer when the weather should be a little less wild. Other sailors with faster boats were rumoured to be planning a later departure. Among them was Bernard Moitesier, a Frenchman.

And not just any Frenchman. Moatesier was already famous for his long-distance sailing exploits and the best-selling books he wrote about them. Books of philosophy, distinctly French philosophy, the kind of lines that make you imagine smoking a gourlois at a Parisian street cafe.

You do not ask a tame seagull why it needs to disappear from time to time toward the open sea. It goes, that's all, and it is as simple as a ray of sunshine, as normal as the blue of the sky. It wasn't clear if the tame seagull Mautessier had heard about the Sunday Times' golden globe race

because rumour had it that he was planning to set off from a port in France. The Sunday Times sent a reporter to explain to him about the trophy and the cash prize, but how the rules said you had to start from a British port. Mouartesier listened, growing... more and more incensed. The very idea, he said, made him want to vomit. I disapprove of a race.

It makes you lose sight of the essential. A voyage to your own outer limits. This search for a profound truth with, as sole witnesses, the sea, the wind, the boat, the infinitely big, the infinitely small. This was a problem for the Sunday Times. If Moucetet was first around the world, it would look a bit silly to give their trophy to someone else. They decided to change their rules

to allow competitors to set off from French ports too. But before they could change the rules, Mouattessier changed his mind. Even philosophers need to eat. And the cash prize was tempting. Money? Money. Alas, yes, money.

More or less, money is necessary. He now had a new plan. He'd sailed from France to a British port, then sail fastest around the world and pocket the cash prize, but show his contempt for the Sunday Times by refusing to pose for photos or give an interview. The rules did not specify that we had to say,

thank you. Maybe he'd even catch Robin Knox, Johnston in his much slower boat. Then he could pick up the trophy without saying thank you too. Cautionary Tales will be back after the break. Women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.

I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers. different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHeart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one

podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com.

What was the Sunday Times Golden Globe race about, really? Was it seamanship, endurance, mental fortitude? The writer Stuart Brand has a more prosaic answer. The race was about maintenance. Robin Knox Johnston knew he had no hope of winning the cash prize for being fastest around the world. To stand a chance of winning the trophy for being first, he had to set off at the earliest possible moment, even though his boat was leaking and it wasn't obvious from where.

He'd just have to figure it all out as he sailed along. In the harbour in Falmouth, he piled on. on board everything he could imagine needing for maintenance on the go. One ball corking cotton, one set corking chisels, 12 yards canvas, seven pounds Stockholm tar, seven pounds marine glue, 18 tins flexible seam stopper. On went every kind of tool and spare part he could conceive of. By the time he'd finished, the boat was sitting two inches lower in the water. But it meant that when the leak got really serious, somewhere near Cape Verde,

Knox Johnston had a floating hardware store to draw on as he drank his coffee, smoked his cigarette, and contemplated what to do. In his book, Maintenance of Everything, Stuart Brand commends Knox Johnston for taking his time. Skilled maintainers advise never trying to solve a new or complex problem. problem without a thorough mulling first. Of course, skilled maintainers don't usually have to shoot a shark before they can affect their solution. I squeezed the trigger. There was an explosion in the water as the shark's body thrashed around, but within half a minute, the threshing ceased and the lifeless body began slowly to plane down

until it disappeared into the blue. Knox Johnston waited for a while to check no other sharks were lurking. Then jumped into the sea, dived underwater, and hammered in the canvas and the copper sheet. The leaking into the boat almost stopped completely. Maintenance. Knox Johnston sailed on. Bernard Moortesio sailed from France to a British port and made his final preparation. His approach was the opposite of Robin Knox Johnstons.

Instead of piling on board anything he might need, he wanted to get rid of everything he could do without. I unloaded engine, anchor winch, dingy, all unnecessary charts, a suitcase full of books, four anchors, spare zinc anodes, 900 pounds of chain and all the tins of paint. Incredible, the amount of spare equipment a sailboat can carry masses of improbable bits of gear. The Sunday Times tried to persuade him to take a bulky radio on board like the other sailors so he could keep them updated on his progress.

What Sier said, no. He was trying to get rid of stuff, not add to it. If he wanted to communicate with the world, he'd do it how he always had when sailing alone. Wait till he encountered a ship, scribble a message, put it in a small container, and catapulted in their direction. A good slingshot is worth all the transmitters in the world. Moatesier set sail in August, 69 days after Robin Knox Johnston. But on his bigger and now much lighter boat, he'd surely go faster.

The tame seagull was in his... element. No radio, no baggage, alone. Wind, sea, boat and sails, a compact, diffuse hole without beginning or end, a part and all of the universe, my own universe, truly mine. How do they spend their days at sea, not knowing how quickly the one is catching the other. Knox Johnston, potters doing maintenance. I cleaned out the engine build. I took some of the corking compound and rammed it into the holes in the forward hatch.

And what I see it? I watch the sun set and inhale the breath of the open sea. I feel my being blossoming and my joy soars so high that nothing can disturb it. I refilled the charger and continued boosting the batteries. A flying fish shoots straight up in a 20. foot leap into the air. I went over the rigging with a mixture of white lead and tallow. A huge barracuda takes off after it and snatches the flying fish at the top of the ark. I gave the cabin a good scrubber. I felt sorry for the little one, but was so struck by the terrible

beauty that I let out a big... Ah! Knox Johnston is clobbered by a massive wave. Then water starts to seep alarmingly into the cabin. I discovered that there were ominous cracks all around the edge of the cabin. I got out my box of odd nuts and screws and selected the longest bolts and heaviest screws in order to try to reinforce the cabin top fastenings. The job kept me busy all day. Matesier, meanwhile, is communing with the seabirds. I offer them my cheese and friendship.

With time and patience, one comes to eat, out of my hand. They raised their heads toward me, cocking them to one side, giving a barely audible little cry, as if they were trying to say that they liked me too. And the porpoises.

On a foggy day, two dozen porpoises swim alongside Morteur's boat in a straight line. Then they all suddenly turn 90 degrees, degrees to the right. Then they line up again alongside the boat, and again make a sharp turn to the right. Mouartesee watches puzzled. They seem nervous. I do not understand. Mouartesier checks his compass. The wind has shifted and he hasn't realized. He'd set his course to pass a rocky island,

but now he's heading straight towards it. The rocks, he has to turn to the right, just as the porpoises had been doing. As he turns his boat, something wonderful happens. A big black and white porpoise jumps 10 or 12 feet in the air in a fantastic somersault, bursting with a tremendous joy, as if he was shouting, The man understood! You understood! Robin Knox Johnston thought he,

had put on board everything he could possibly need to make repairs as he went along. He was wrong. No one can think of everything. But a master maintainer is ingenious at finding solutions with whatever he has to hand. When his radio transmitter breaks, for example, Knox Johnston takes it apart and sees that a wire is corroded. My problem was how to reconnect it effectively, as I had to be able to. had no solder. In the end, I broke three of my navigation light bulbs and melted down the scraps of solder from the terminals. When his battery charger stops working, he strips it down and rebuilds it, then realizes he's forgotten to bring a feeler gauge, a tool that lets you set a very precise gap

between two points in a spark plug. He needs to set the gap at 15,000ths of an inch. How on earth can he measure such a tiny distance? He looks around the boat for anything that might help. The logbook. He counts the pages. There are 200 to the inch. Therefore one page equals 5,000ths. Thus, three thicknesses of paper.

It works. The charger's fixed. But for all his ingenuity and maintenance, Knox Johnston can't control the winds. Come on, God. Give me a bloody break. It's been nothing but calms or gales for weeks. How about some steady winds for a change?

He's painfully aware that his boat is smaller and slower than Bernard Mautesier's. And because Mautesier refused to take a radio, nobody has a clue where he is. Not knowing eats away. at Knox Johnston. I'll bet the Frenchman is having beautiful Westerlies. What the hell is wrong with the bloody weather anyway? And Moatesé?

The Frenchman is thinking that he hadn't been ruthless enough in port when he cleared out unwanted baggage. He's brought too much food and fuel. He starts lobbing stuff overboard. The box of army biscuits, a case of condescending. dense milk, about 30 pounds of a jam I don't like, a coil of nylon line, kerosene gets the same treatment.

I took more than I needed. Heave-ho, four jerry cans hit the drink. Moortesier, by the way, was an avid environmentalist. In 1968, nobody had yet realized that ocean pollution was a thing to worry about. As for the race, Moitessier is philosophical. If we are indeed racing, I do not feel that it is against other sailors and other boats. As he rounds the Cape of Good Hope,

Wattessier passes a ship and slingshots a message at them. Knox Johnston is passing New Zealand when he hears the news of where Moucet was and when. He's still ahead. Watesier is closing. At the rates they've sailed so far, the race to be first is neck and neck. The two are on course to arrive back in Britain

at just the same time. Watesier will surely get the cash. Knox Johnston could still win the trophy and secure the place in the history books for the British, not the French. That was just the sort of news I needed to spur me on. Cautionary tales will be back in a moment. We and women are looking for more.

More out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHeart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com.

That's iHeartadvertising.com. In his book, Maintenance of Everything, Stuart Brand wants to convince us to pay more attention to this unsexy subject. Maintenance, he points out, is what keeps everything going. But it's also a tiresome. chore. Brush the damn teeth, change the damn oil. And so, says Brand, we shirk it, defer it, fail to budget time or money for it.

And we pay the price when one day the thing we should have been maintaining suddenly fails. Robin Knox Johnston was brilliant at maintenance. But so was Bernard Matesio in his way. He writes about it in his book, tucked away in an appendix of practical advice, so different from the philosophizing that you'd hardly guess it's the same author. A complete dox anode treatment is often as good as hot-dip galvanizing, but the steel must always be sand-blasted first, or thoroughly cleaned with a product of the rust-killer type,

if the dox anode is to hold well. Mouartesier's philosophy of maintenance is simple. Minimise the need for it. His boat is made from steel, not wood. That makes it absolutely watertight. You won't find Moultesier diving overboard and dodging sharks to fix gaps in planks. Of course, steel will rust given time. But that's what Moultesei's practical advice.

devices about, exactly which treatments to apply, which paints, how many coats, in which order, so you can do things like sail around the world without feeling the need to take your tins of paint with you. Watessier refused the offer of a radio, one less thing to go wrong. Indeed, he saw no need for any electronics on board at all. That meant no need for charging batteries. All those problems that Robin Knox Johnston had to grapple with were problems that simply couldn't occur on Wattessier's boat. Given a choice between something simple and something complicated, choose what is simple without hesitation.

Sooner or later, what is complicated will almost always lead to problems. Robin Knox Johnston sailed on from New Zealand, where he'd heard the news that the race with Mautésier was neck and neck. I did not dare risk wasting a single hour if I wanted to beat him home. The southern oceans stretched ahead again, thousands of lonely miles to Cape Horn, the tip of South America. It might be summer in the southern hemisphere, but still the waves were fiercely. One crashed over the boat while the hatch to the cabin was still open, drenching everything. I had to sleep wet for three days, as I could not put things out to dry,

and my efforts to dry the sleeping bag over the heater failed. On Christmas Eve, Knox Johnston knocked back whiskey and belted out carols at the top of his voice, even if he couldn't remember all the words. Christmas Day brought news on the radio of the hot. Apollo 8 mission, the first human spaceflight to orbit the moon. They were similar in a way, men in a small vessel, far from home, doing something that no one had done before. In other ways, not similar at all. The contrast between their magnificent effort and my own trip were appalling. I was doing absolutely nothing to advance scientific knowledge.

I was sailing around the world simply because I bloody well wanted to. Knox Johnston paused, feeling maudlin. Only for a moment. And I realised I was thoroughly enjoying myself. At last, Knox Johnston rounded Cape Horn. The fearsome southern ocean was behind him. The last leg of the journey back north, up the Atlantic, should now be much. more straightforward. But Knox Johnston surprised himself.

My first impulse on rounding the horn was to keep on going east. The feeling of having got past the worst was terrific and I suppose this impulse was a way of cocking a snook at the Southern Ocean itself, almost as if to say, I've beaten you and now I'll go round again to prove it. But this temptation to keep on going round the Southern Ocean again, soon passed. I thought of hot baths, pints of beer, the other sex, and steaks, and turned up into the Atlantic for home.

January, February, where was Mortecier? Was he still behind? Had he pulled in front already? Who was going to win? Just a week and a half from Falmouth, the port he had left nine months before, Knox Johnston finally gets news. Mouattessier is out of the race.

Bernard Mouattessier sails past Cape Horn in a philosophical mood. A great cape can't be expressed in longitude and latitude alone. A great cape has a soul, a soul as smooth as a child's, as hard as hard, as He's criminals. Matesier comes to a realization. He doesn't want to go back to Europe. He wants to keep going, round the southern ocean once again,

and then somewhere. Tahiti? Somewhere simple. Far from the snake pit of so-called Western civilization, the monster that is the modern world. It is destroying our earth and trampling the soul of men. There is the slight complication that Montessier has a wife in France and stepchildren.

I do not know how to explain to them. How could they understand? It can't be explained in words. It would be completely useless to try. Mouartier had chucked overboard everything he. decided he didn't need. A coil of nylon line, the jam he didn't like, four jerry cans of kerosene. Now his marriage gets the same treatment. Heave-ho. Mwatessier sails on towards the southern tip of Africa. For the second time on his journey, he encounters a ship off the Cape of Good Hope and slingshots

them a message to pass on to the Sunday times. I am continuing non-stop towards the Pacific Islands because I am happy at sea, and perhaps also to save my soul. Robin Knox Johnston sails back into Falmouth Harbour, the first man ever to sail non-stop around the world. Helicopters hover, camera cruise film, crowds wave and cheer a cannon fires there's the formality of a question from the Falmouth Harbour customs officer

though he can hardly keep a straight face as he asks it where from Knox Johnston grins ha ha ha Falmouth Robin Knox Johnston has added his name to Britain's bookful of heroes But when someone suggests that the Frenchman must have been mad to give up his chance of glory, Knox Johnston shakes his head. I said I knew and understood what he did, and that he didn't need to explain it.

I said to people, no, Montessier is not mad. I had quite similar urges. Later, Knox Johnston gets an envelope through the mail, postmarked Tahiti. Bernard Mouartessier has read about what Knox Johnston said and written to thank him. I got a lovely, charming letter. As for Mouattessier, he leaps to Knox Johnston's defence, whenever anyone suggests that the Britain only won because the Frenchman pulled out. You can't know that, says Moultesier.

And anyway, if I'd won, it would have been a grave injustice, as Knox Johnston's boat was much smaller and much less sound. These two very different men, alone in their boats, had formed a bond across the ocean. We met once. It was a nice friendly chap. There are two ways to win at the game of maintenance. One is to be a skilled, ingenious and hard-working maintainer.

The other is to simplify, to opt out as far as possible from having anything that can go wrong. Of course, you can't opt out completely. Even simple things need maintaining. The author Stuart Brand once met Bernard Montessier, who told him how every day he'd do whatever little jobs needed doing. And then, I spent my time reading. sleeping, eating, the good, quiet life with nothing to do.

In much the same way, there are two ways to win at the game of life. One is to play by the rules better than anyone else. The other is to make up your own rules. Again, up to a point. Alas, yes, more or less, money is necessary. Matesier solved that problem

by writing another best-selling book. Robin Knox Johnston won. But Bernard Mouartessier certainly didn't lose. So much for the trophy for being the first man back. But remember, it wasn't just about the trophy. The Sunday Times had cleverly added another strand to their Golden Globe contest to keep up public interest when the trophy was won. The cash prize for being the fastest.

Mottessier had turned his back on the money, but there were still two other sailors out there who both left later and were both on course to post faster times than Robin Knox Johnston. At least, that's how it seemed. But the glitter of the golden dress, globe was about to turn dark. We'll continue the story next time on Cautionary Tales.

A key source for this episode was Stuart Brands, The Maintenance of Everything. For a full list of sources, see timharford.com. Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines and Ryan Dilley. It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Ben Nadaf Haffrey edited the scripts. It features the voice talents of Melanie Guthridge, Genevieve Gaunt, Stella Harford,

Maseaer Monroe, Jemal Westman and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohn, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brodie, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries.

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