THE widow of Donald Crowhurst – the would- be round the world sailor who pulled off the greatest maritime hoax of all time – says his death was a disaster she never got over.

It was 40 years ago today that Crowhurst's boat, Teignmouth Electron, was found drifting with no-one on board. The town councillor and father of four disappeared during the race to be the first person to sail solo around the world.

For months, Crowhurst had been circling round the South Atlantic, faking his voyage with false position reports while his fellow competitors risked their lives in the Southern Ocean. When the time was right, he slotted back onto the route, near the Falklands.

But the dark secret of his hoax proved too much for his mind. As he sailed towards a triumphant homecoming, he suffered a psychological breakdown.

The last entry in his logbooks was made nine days before his boat was found.

The news he had not sailed round the world rocked the nation. The world's most famous sailor Sir Francis Chichester called it the "sea drama of the century".

For years, reported sightings of Donald Crowhurst in South America, the Westcountry and a caravan in Scotland, fuelled conspiracy theories he had survived and was in hiding.

Now, in a book published to coincide with the anniversary of the Golden Globe race, Crowhurst's widow Clare, 76, reveals she too believed her husband may have been alive.

In A Race Too Far, by BBC journalist Chris Eakin, she says: "Certainly for years I thought he could have survived. But I couldn't accept the fact that he would have survived and not come back and certainly not want to be with his children. He absolutely adored his kids. The possibility that he would have stayed away deliberately you couldn't entertain.

"Now, I think he definitely died at the time. But how he died? I find it impossible, knowing the person, to believe that he committed suicide. I still find that impossible to believe."

Mrs Crowhurst, a grandmother of five, talks of a lifetime avoiding the intense curiosity in the family name, revealing to Eakin that for the last 20 years she has had a secret hideaway deep in the Australian outback. She said: "I love being absolutely alone there. I go for six months at a time. I love the isolation."

She lives near two of her grown up children, in Seaton, less than an hour along the coast from Teignmouth, from where Donald set sail.

Mrs Crowhurst makes no attempt to hide the fact she has never got over Donald's disastrous voyage, saying: "I think of him every single day, I think. Certainly several times a week.

"It has been a disaster. I think it has been a disaster for the children even more, their father being missing which is, God knows, enough, but it has shaped their lives, without doubt."

Financially, life was made easier for the Crowhursts by the winner of the race, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, donating his £5,000 prize money to an appeal fund.

Now 70, he told Eakin: "I was giving the money to an unfortunate family who were going to be in an even worse plight now."

A Race Too Far by Chris Eakin is published by Ebury, priced £16.99.