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  Contents

  Francis Chichester

  Dedication

  My Thanks to My Supporters

  1. The Dream

  2. Frustrations

  3. The “Off” at Last

  4. My Sixty-Fifth Birthday Party

  5. Whistling for Wind and Rain

  6. The Roaring Forties

  7. Overcoming Disaster

  8. Bass Strait

  9. In Australia

  10. Capsize in the Tasman Sea

  11. “I Have Been Damned Lucky”

  12. Two Thursdays

  13. To the Horn

  14. Rounding Cape Horn

  15. Into the Broad Atlantic

  16. Trade Winds and Doldrums

  17. A Pleasant Sail At Last!

  An Epilogue

  APPENDIX I

  APPENDIX II

  STORES OUTWARD 1966

  FOOD AND GENERAL STOWAGE

  STORES HOMEWARD 1967

  HOMEWARD 1967 (LAST MINUTE)

  Francis Chichester

  Gipsy Moth Circles the World

  Francis Chichester

  Aviator and sailor Sir Francis Chichester is best known for being the first and fastest person to sail around the globe single-handedly in The Gipsy Moth IV. Following this achievement he wrote several books and made films about his sailing experiences.

  Born in Devon and educated at Marlborough College, Chichester emigrated to New Zealand at the age of 18 and spent ten years in forestry, mining and property development. On his return to England he learned to fly, and in the original Gipsy Moth seaplane he became the first person to complete an East-West solo flight across the Tasman Sea, for which he was awarded the inaugural Amy Johnson Memorial Trophy.

  Chichester wrote many popular books on his air adventures, and during WWII he wrote the manual that single-man fighter pilots used to navigate across Europe. In 1964 Chichester published his autobiography, the bestselling The Lonely Sea and the Sky, and was knighted three years later for ‘individual achievement and sustained endeavour in the navigation and seamanship of small craft’.

  Chichester used his navigation experience to create a successful map-making company, Francis Chichester Ltd, which today still publishes pocket guides and maps which are sold throughout the world.

  Dedication

  With love to

  SHEILA

  my great partner in this enterprise

  and to

  GILES

  my junior partner

  hoping they will enjoy my story of

  the project and how it panned out

  My Thanks to My Supporters

  This solo circumnavigation was, apart from the actual sailing, a surprisingly intensive joint effort put up by many friends and supporters. I find it difficult to thank everyone who helped me, but I would like to name a few who, as the venture progressed, so willingly gave their assistance.

  In England before the start: Paul Hodder-Williams and George Greenfield who both backed the idea from the moment it was mooted; Harold Evans of The Sunday Times and Alastair Hetherington of The Guardian who believed the project sound enough to buy the radio despatches. I have written of several supporters and helpers in the book: Colonel Whitbread, Lord Dulverton, architects Warwick Hood and Alan Payne, their Excellencies the Governor-General and Lady Casey, Captain Max Hinchliffe RAN, Jim Mason, George Gardiner and John Pleasants; the four apprentices of Kelvin and Hughes; John Fairhall, Murray Sayle and Nigel Forbes.

  Other helpers who were not written about in the book include: Monica Cooper and the staff of Francis Chichester Ltd, George West, Supervisor of the GPO Marine Radio Section at Brent, Ernest Rayment of Kelvin and Hughes who helped me collect my library of charts.

  In Sydney many people made us feel at home as well as helping us in every possible way: the Lord Chief Justice and Lady Barwick, His Excellency the British High Commissioner and Lady Johnston; Hugh and Bar Eaton; Commander Wood, RN, of Canberra; the Flag Officer and staff of the RSYS; the Commodore and Secretary of the CCA; President Nancy Leebold and the officers of the Australian Institute of Navigation; William Vines, Managing Director of the IWS; Jim Sare and Darli McCourt of Hodder and Stoughton, Sydney, who dealt with thousands of letters, mostly from young people; Terry O’Keefe and Pat McCarthy of IWS; Colin, Lorna and Robert Anderson; Peter Green, Captain James Dunkley of Oriana who looked after Sheila so well, and took home my charts used on the passage Plymouth to Sydney.

  On return to England: the Commander-in-Chief, Plymouth, and Lady Talbot; the Lord Mayor, Lady Mayoress and the Corporation of Plymouth; Mr Lloyd-Jones, the Town Clerk and Mr Bottom, the Public Relations Officer; the Vice-Commodore, flag officers, and Captain and Mrs Terence Shaw of the Royal Western YC of England; Surgeon Rear-Admiral Stanley Miles and the staff of the RN Hospital, Plymouth; Dr Gordon Latto; Frank Carr, who collated for me all the historical details of Sir Francis Drake’s knighting at Greenhithe by Elizabeth I; Erroll Bruce, our delightful sailing and naval etiquette master on the sail up from Plymouth to London; Lord Simon, Chairman, Commander Gilbert Parmiter, harbour master, and the staff of the Port of London Authority; Chief Superintendent D. Davies of the Thames Division Metropolitan Police and his staff; Captain and Mrs Arples and the staff of the Training ship Worcester; Sir Richard Colville, press officer to HM The Queen.

  At Greenwich: Admiral-President Sir Horace Lyddon and Captain M. A. J. Hennell of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich; the Lord Mayor of London and Lady Bellinger; the Corporation of the City of London; the Remembrancer Sir Paul Davie and Colonel Britton.

  I would like to thank, too, Raymond Seymour, our guiding star in public relations, and John Fox of Whitbreads whose help was invaluable.

  All these people did far more for me and the voyage than they need have done.

  Finally, after the oceanic hurly-burly was done, John and Helen Anderson, who achieved the editing of about 400,000 words that I have written about this voyage, to bring it down to book size ready for printing in September 1967. If you like the book, praise them; if you don’t, blame me.

  F.C.

  September, 1967

  Acknowledgement is due to The Times for permission to reproduce the extract by Murray Sayle which appeared in The Times on March 21, 1967; to The Sun for permission to quote the interview between John Seddon and Alan Villiers (January 12, 1967); to The Guardian for permission to quote from Alan Villiers’s letter, published January 11, 1967; and to Rupert Hart-Davis, Ltd, for permission to quote from A Gypsy of the Horn by Rex Clements.

  1. The Dream

  This is a fairy story for me. Long, long ago, as the best fairy stories begin, I wanted to fly round the world alone. At the end of 1929, I had flown from London to Sydney alone in my Gipsy Moth plane, rigged as a land plane. I wanted to circle the world alone and the only way I could see of doing it was by fitting out the Gipsy Moth as a seaplane, which would enable me to route my voyage through Japan and Northern Canada, where there were no airfields at suitable intervals.
So I learnt how to fly a seaplane, converted the Gipsy Moth into one, and set off again from Sydney. How I flew into the half-mile span of steel telephone wires stretched across the harbour at Katsuura and was catapulted into the harbour is another story. That ended my solo attempt, and, indeed, it was only a miracle that I escaped alive. That was in 1931.

  As the years passed, this urge to circle the world alone lay dormant in me, like a gorse seed which will lie in the earth for fifty years until the soil is stirred to admit some air, or light, and the seed suddenly burgeons. And so it was with me, only flying, meanwhile, gradually lost the attractions of pioneering to become a matter of technical training and piloting expertise, and all the places that I had hoped to go to, where an aeroplane had never been, had not only seen aeroplanes, but had grown used to them, and the usage of them.

  I will not go into details about how in 1953 I changed over from flying to ocean racing in yachts. I have already described this in my book The Lonely Sea and the Sky. After the record-breaking attempt I made in 1962, in my solo voyage across the North Atlantic in my yacht Gipsy Moth III, I decided that there was a chance of circumnavigating the world solo in an interesting, attractive way. Hundreds of yachtsmen have sailed round the world, including many sailing alone. Nearly all these have followed the well-beaten trail along the Trade Wind belts. I think most of them have taken about three years over the voyage. But I knew only of eight yachts which had circumnavigated by way of Cape Horn. Actually, there was a ninth which I did not know about—Bernard Moitessier’s Joshua, in which Bernard and his wife Françoise had rounded the Horn, though I do not think they had circumnavigated. The Horn was the big attraction in a voyage round the world. For years it had been in the back of my mind. It not only scared me, frightened me, but I think it would be fair to say that it terrified me. The accounts of the storms there are, quite simply, terrifying. The tale of ships lost in that region could never be completed because there have been so many.

  I told myself for a long time that anyone who tried to round the Horn in a small yacht must be crazy. Of the eight yachts I knew to have attempted it, six had been capsized or somersaulted, before, during or after the passage. I hate being frightened, but, even more, I detest being prevented by fright. At the same time the Horn had a fearsome fascination, and it offered one of the greatest challenges left in the world.

  I started reading up every interesting account I could find, and from every success or failure there was something to be learned. Finally, I began to cheer up; most of the yachts were, I considered, unsuitable for the task, yet only two had been lost with their crews. I thought that, with a suitable craft, and suitable tactics, I could make the voyage.

  The second interest for me was that I saw a chance of making the fastest voyage round the world that had ever been made in a small boat. I planned a two-passage voyage, with Sydney the only port of call. This was the only way to make speed. I got the idea from 1929, when I tried to beat the time of Hinkler’s wonderful solo flight from England to Australia. The chief reason for my failure then, in my opinion, was that I planned two flights a day and lost hours of valuable daylight dealing with all the authorities, passport, customs, etc., in two different countries each day, whereas Hinkler made one long flight per day. I certainly would have made one long flight if I had been able to get permission to carry more petrol—I was only allowed to fit two extra tanks—but I ought to have overcome this obstacle somehow.

  To sail a yacht from Plymouth to Sydney in one stage was a most formidable proposition: could it be done? I measured it off somewhat hurriedly, and made it 13,750 miles. This was along the old clipper way, which the square-rigged ships followed, and reckoned the fastest route after they had experimented with every kind of diversion over a hundred years, and with ten thousand ships. (When, later, I measured it more carefully and slowly, it came out at 14,100 miles.) What was the best time that I could hope to do this in? In 1964, in the second solo race across the Atlantic, I was beaten by Lieutenant Eric Tabarly of the French Navy, who had a boat specially built for the race; his speed was 105½ miles per day for the east-west crossing of the Atlantic. On the west-east passage home after the race I had my son Giles with me, and we averaged 126 miles per day. I reckoned that the clipper way would be more like the west-east passage across the Atlantic than the east-west. On the other hand, a passage of 14,000 miles was a very different proposition from one of 3,200 miles. However, I reckoned that 126 miles per day was a fair target, at least one that I could aim for, and hope to hit.

  I had known that there would be a boat or boats specially built for the 1964 Transatlantic race, and I dare say that I could have got myself a new boat, too, if I had really tried; but I did not want to try then, because by now I had set my heart on the round-the-world voyage, and already the Transatlantic race had become secondary in importance to me. I saw it as a chance to test my theories as to what would be the best kind of hull, gear and tactics for this round-the-world voyage. The 1964 race had fourteen starters, and it was a slice of good luck for me that I was beaten, coming second to the Frenchman, Eric Tabarly. My sporting cousin, Tony Dulverton, went along to see my wife Sheila during the race and said, “Why had I not got a suitable boat which would stand a chance against the Frenchman?” He added that he would provide me with a boat for the next race in 1968. When I got back to England I told him of my round-the-world-Cape-Horn ambitions, and he agreed to provide me with the boat that I wanted.

  Now I must go back a bit in time. Before the 1964 race I had been to the naval architect, John Illingworth, and discussed a Gipsy Moth IV for trans-ocean solo racing. His firm of Illingworth and Primrose was to design it, and preliminary sketches were prepared. At or about the time of the race a place was booked in Souter’s boatyard at Cowes for building this yacht in 1965. The price quoted me by John was within my range, provided that I sold Gipsy Moth III first. The construction was to be of a multi-skinned hull; that is to say, a number of thin skins or plankings laid diagonally across each other and glued together, so that the hull would be, in effect, a moulded piece of plywood. I asked for a scow-shaped hull, that is to say of broad beam, shallow draught, and flattish bottom, with a deep keel. John said this would not do, because a scow-shaped hull would pound too heavily in the open sea. I was happy to leave the hull design entirely to him. I had a great admiration for his successes in ocean racing. While I was still in America after the 1964 Transatlantic solo race, a cable arrived from Illingworth and Primrose suggesting that I should share the cost of the mould for this boat with Lort Phillips, who was building a boat for my rival in the race, Valentine Howells. I was upset at the thought of sharing what I had always assumed was a design exclusive for myself, and so I abandoned this particular project.

  Perhaps I should observe here that singlehanded racing is very different from racing with a full, and probably expert, crew. With a good crew, a boat can be expected to sail at its greatest possible speed the whole time. With a singlehander, it is a different case. He cannot man the helm, and keep the sails trimmed for their maximum efficiency, for twenty-four hours a day, as can be done with a crewed-up boat. Success for the singlehander depends largely on his judgement as to what will be the best rig, and tactics, while he is asleep. He also depends enormously on what kind of boat he has, what effort-saving gear he uses, and what fatigue he can spare himself by using cunning tactics. With a lot of crewed-up yachts, all sailed at their maximum speed, the race would go to the best boat, which might well mean that there was no true race at all, and for that reason handicapping is essential. In a singlehanded race across an ocean handicapping is nonsense.

  After sailing back across the Atlantic from the 1964 race I was, as usual after a long voyage, in an optimistic, happy mood, and when Tony Dulverton said that he wanted to build a boat for me, I suggested again that Illingworth and Primrose should be the designers. Tony said that Camper and Nicholsons must build it, because they have the reputation of being the best yacht-builders in the world, and t
hey had built his grandfather’s yacht. Sheila also was keen to build at Camper and Nicholsons. She reckoned that we would get the best from them and believed in having it. At a meeting of the architects, the builders, Sheila and me, Tony announced that the boat must be built in the best possible way, regardless of expense. This ensured, of course, that it would be an expensive boat. I am a business man, and I was one of the few pioneer aviators, if not the only one, who made the money which was used to pay for the aeroplanes he flew. My yachts, Gipsy Moth II and Gipsy Moth III, were also paid for with money that I had saved in business, so I could never have entered into the deal that was made, whereby Camper and Nicholsons, unable to quote a definite price for the boat, were not restricted as to the amount it would cost. However, Tony said, generously, that I was to have no worry whatever about finance; I was to be free to get on with preparations for the voyage.

  John Illingworth’s original design was for a yacht of only 8 tons displacement, but after this meeting he increased the length of the boat from 48 to 54 feet. I said, facetiously, that it might as well have a few more feet and become a Twelve Metre! I then said that although my original wish as to size was 9 tons Thames Measurement, I would agree to increasing the size, so that the displacement was 9 tons; but that it must not be any bigger. Perhaps I should explain here that “Thames Measurement” is a convenitional formula for expressing the tonnage of yachts, while “displacement” represents the actual weight of a boat. Accepting the Thames Measurement figure for the displacement would mean a substantially bigger boat. Illingworth said he wanted the size for speed, and that it would be a very light, easily driven hull. I said that the mainsail must not exceed 300 square feet; his plan had a mainsail of less than 300 square feet, a mizzen of about 140 square feet and the largest foresails were a working jib of 200 square feet and a genoa staysail, also of 200 square feet. This seemed a very small sail plan for a 54-foot boat, and I said so. He said that the hull would be of such light displacement that it would be easily driven by this sail area. I believed, however, that the boat would scarcely have moved in light airs with that sail plan, and it was fortunate that I asked for a jib 50 per cent larger; and I also asked for two big genoas, three times as big as his biggest foresail, that is, 600 square feet each. I objected to the long, pointed counter on the plan, which seemed to me to be a potential weakness, and the length was cut down to 53 feet I inch. I did not gain much, however, because the self-steering gear was then perched up beyond the counter. The design had a short, deep keel amidships, with a separate rudder and skeg aft. I thought this design would be unsafe running in big seas down south, and John agreed to extend the keel to the rudder. Building was to start at the end of 1964, and to be finished by September 1965.