GIPSY MOTH CIRCLES THE WORLD by Francis Chichester

He won the '60 race and was runner-up in the '64 race. The name, the fourth boat in Chichester's series, all named Gipsy Moth, originated from the de Havilland Gipsy Moth aircraft in which Chichester completed pioneering work in aerial navigation techniques.Īfter being nursed back to health from a suspected lung abscess by his wife, Chichester undertook two single-handed Transatlantic races from Plymouth to New York in 1960 and Plymouth to Newport in 1964 in Gipsy Moth III. Gipsy Moth IV's voyage was the inspiration for the Golden Globe Race (GGR)which continues today. Gipsy Moth IV was the first ever purpose built ocean racer and has over the years become the most famous of small sailing vessels. Gipsy Moth IV is a 53 ft (16 m) ketch that Sir Francis Chichester commissioned specifically to sail single-handed around the globe, racing against the times set by the clipper ships of the 19th century. In active service with the 'Royal Thames Yacht Club' Chichester's writing was elevated at times to a transcendent level by his lonely and dangerous circumstances.The Gipsy Moth IV on display in Greenwich, England. This handsome Sailor's Classics edition features a 2,500-word introduction by bestselling author and sailor Jonathan Raban, which places Chichester's voyage in the seafaring pantheon and his book in the literature of the sea. Chichester's voyage was the inspiration for the first singlehanded nonstop around-the-world race two years later, and the world of voyaging has never looked back. This magnificent 28,000-mile voyage, completed in May 1967, established new records for speed and endurance, captured the imagination of the world, and earned a knighthood for Chichester after his return.

Only nine yachts had previously circumnavigated by way of Cape Horn, and of them six had been capsized or somersaulted at least once. Francis Chichester, at age 65, set out alone from Plymouth in his 53-foot ketch Gypsy Moth IV in August 1966 and sailed eastward around the world through the wild Southern Ocean, stopping only once (the first to accomplish this), in Sydney. The voyages might circle the world or circle Long Island Sound, but each one alters its narrator and, thanks to the power of its telling, the reader.

However fascinating those stories are - and however much in vogue - The Sailor's Classics plow a different furrow, retracing the birth and development of small-boat voyaging over the past century-plus, as experienced and related by small crews or lone sailors.

or government-sponsored voyages of exploration to Antarctica or the Northwest Passage. The Sailor's Classics are not books about the old sailing navies, or whaling voyages. This is Volume 1 in The Sailor's Classics series which is the sailing canon with Raban as arbiter: books that altered the shape of small-boat voyaging and exert a telling influence to this day.

GIPSY MOTH CIRCLES THE WORLD by Francis Chichester