Film crew shoots on location on the Brac

Film crew focusing on the trimaran landmark.

Making Movies on the Brac
The movie world came to Cayman Brac this week when
an APT film crew started filming Deep Water, a high-
seas adventure film about the first Golden Globe sailing
race. (l-r) Director of Photography Nina Kellgren,
Director Jerry Rothwell, and Camera Assistant
Jamie Hammond.

Wednesday,  August 17, 2005

A documentary feature about drama and mystery on the high seas during the first Golden Globe single-handed, round-the-world sailing race in 1968 will feature one of Cayman Brac’s famous landmarks. A film crew from APF Films travelled from London to shoot footage of the Teignmouth Electron, a rotting trimaran on the southwest shore of the Island that has been the subject of books, magazine articles, and artwork in London’s Tate Gallery. It even has its own website, which is visited regularly by people drawn into its strange tale.

Deep Water, directed by Jerry Rothwell and due to be released next March, will focus on the compelling tale of one of the competitors, Donald Crowhurst, a British electronics engineer and amateur sailor.

Realizing that neither he nor his yacht, the Teignmouth Electron, were prepared for the ordeal, Crowhurst kept a fraudulent track of his global voyage for more than eight months, without ever leaving the Atlantic, before slipping into a state of schizophrenic paranoia and finally committing suicide.

The story was made legendary in the classic account, The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst, by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall, which was first published in 1970 and reprinted in 2001.

It was described by the Washington Post as “one of the most extraordinary stories of the sea ever to be published”, while the first man to sail single-handed round the world, Sir Francis Chichester, called it “the sea drama of the century”.

Mr Rothwell, together with Director of Photography Nina Kellgren and Camera Assistant Jamie Hammond, travelled to Argentina, where Crowhurst stopped briefly for repairs, and then on to Cayman Brac.

The film is likely to begin with the footage of the Electron on Cayman Brac and, according to Mr Rothwell, may end with the yacht, too.

Deep Water is a Pathé Pictures, UK Film Council’s New Cinema Fund and FilmFour presentation of an APT Films and Stir Fried Films co-production. The producers are Jonny Persey and Al Morrow of APT Films. Pathé Distribution will release theatrically in the UK, with international sales handled by Pathé Pictures International.

Cayman Net News’ interview with Mr Rothwell will be published in Friday’s edition of The Bracker and Little Caymanian.

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