He did not have modern navigational instruments, and was aware of his latitude via sextant observation but was estimating longitude and, as he tells it in "Sailing to the Reefs", neglected a three-knot ocean current, leading to the grounding.

This he sailed via stops in South Africa and St. Helena to the West Indies, but on a trip from Trinidad to St. Lucia he once again was shipwrecked due to physical exhaustion.

So Moitessier proposed sailing Joshua home not via the Indian Ocean and Suez Canal, as originally planned, but eastward, via the quickest route, including a passage about the much feared Cape Horn.

Somewhat reluctantly, Moitessier decided to sail Joshua to Plymouth to meet the criterion for the race of leaving from an English port, but left months after several smaller and therefore slower boats.

In the process of transferring a canister of film and reports for the Sunday Times to a freighter, he allowed the bow of Joshua to be drawn into the stern of the ship, bending the bowsprit, which he was able to fix with winches on board.

A succession of gales and calm periods characterised his trip through the Southern Ocean till he passed Cape Horn on 5 Feb 1969.

After the period of calms in the Indian Ocean, where Moitessier became depressed and discovered yoga as a means of controlling his moods, he started to think of not returning to Europe, which he saw as a cause of many of his worries.

By firing a note using a slingshot onto the deck of a passing ship, he was able to get a message to his London Times correspondent, stating: "parce que je suis heureux en mer et peut-être pour sauver mon âme" ("because I am happy at sea and perhaps to save my soul").

Although he abandoned the race, Moitessier still circumnavigated the globe, crossing around the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, and then sailing almost two-thirds of the way around a second time, all non-stop and mostly in the roaring forties, setting another record for the longest nonstop passage by a yacht, with a total of 37,455 nautical miles in 10 months.

Moitessier and crews from other yachts spent days digging a trench but the salvage costs were too great so he sold the wreck to Reto Filli (Swiss) and Jo Daubenberger (USA) for $20.

Moitessier died of prostate cancer on June 16, 1994 and is buried in an informal corner of the main cemetery in Bono, Brittany, France.