In August of 1979, Nick Ward began the six-hundred-mile course of the UK’s Fastnet Race with perfect weather. Within forty-eight hours, the deadliest storm in the history of modern sailing had blasted through the Irish Sea, throwing one of the world’s most prestigious races into bedlam and taking the lives of fifteen sailors. Ward’s boat, Grimalkin, was capsized again and again, and the skipper lost overboard; after hours of struggle, three of the crew fled the boat for the liferaft, and Nick was left alone to face down a storm that has become legendary among sailors and racing fans alike. Left for Dead is Nick Ward’s harrowing and inspirational memoir of how he survived that dreadful night—the untold true story of an accident that has intrigued lovers of the sea for almost thirty years.