The sport and practice of single-handed sailing or solo sailing is sailing with only one crewmember. The term usually refers to ocean and long-distance sailing and is used in competitive sailing and among Cruisers.

Donald Charles Alfred Crowhurst was a British businessman and amateur sailor who disappeared while competing in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, a single-handed, round-the-world yacht race held in 1968–69. Soon after starting the race his boat, the Teignmouth Electron, began taking on water. Crowhurst secretly abandoned the race while reporting false positions in an attempt to appear to complete a circumnavigation without actually doing so. His ship's logbooks, found after his disappearance, suggest that the stress he was under and associated psychological deterioration may have led to his suicide.