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  THE LONELY SEA AND THE SKY

  First published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1964

  Reissued by Summersdale Publishers Ltd in 2002, reprinted 2006

  This edition published by Summersdale Publishers Ltd in 2012

  Copyright © Francis Chichester 1964

  The right of Francis Chichester to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, nor transmitted, nor translated into a machine language, without the written permission of the publishers.

  Condition of Sale

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

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  eISBN: 978-0-85765-684-1

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  To Sheila, my wife, with my admiration,

  respect and gratitude,

  as well as my love

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  If this book has any literary merit, it is greatly due to John Anderson who selected the more interesting parts of my long story. I wrote far too much. Little voyages have been sweet to me – on a bicycle or a horse, on foot, skis or skates, but there is no room for bicycles in a biography.

  Here is that great poem 'Sea Fever',* because it gives in only twelve lines the key to my lifetime search for romance and adventure.

  I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

  And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,

  And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sails shaking,

  And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking.

  I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide

  Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;

  And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,

  And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea gulls crying.

  I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gipsy life,

  To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;

  And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,

  And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

  With thanks to the greatest of sea-poets,

  John Masefield, the Poet Laureate.

  FRANCIS CHICHESTER

  * Reprinted by permission of the Society of Authors and Dr. John Masefield, O.M.; also The Macmillan Company (New York).

  'From death before we are ready to die,

  good Lord deliver us'

  F. C.

  LINE ILLUSTRATIONS

  Trial flight round Europe, November 1929

  London–Sydney, December 1929–January 1930

  First east–west solo crossing of the Tasman Sea, 1931

  A reproduction of the author's actual chart made during his flight over the Tasman Sea, 1931

  Australia–Japan, 1931

  The course of the typhoon, 1931

  Sydney–London, 1936

  First solo Atlantic crossing, 1960

  Second and record-breaking solo Atlantic crossing, 1962

  A comparison of the two return journeys

  Plans of Gipsy Moth III

  CONTENTS

  FOREWORD BY GILES CHICHESTER

  INTRODUCTION BY J. R. L. ANDERSON

  PART ONE

  1 THE BEGINNING OF THINGS

  2 SHADES OF THE PRISON HOUSE

  3 FARMHAND

  4 NEW ZEALAND

  5 GOLD AND COAL

  6 HUNTING A FORTUNE

  7 LEARNING TO FLY

  8 START FOR AUSTRALIA

  9 TRIPOLI TO SYDNEY

  10 AUSTRALIA

  PART TWO

  11 THE TASMAN SEA

  12 LANDFALL ON A PINPOINT

  13 WRECKED

  14 SALVAGE

  15 FRESH START

  16 RETURN TO AUSTRALIA

  PART THREE

  17 FIRST STAGE TO JAPAN

  18 GASOLINE AND TROUBLE

  19 JAPANESE ENCOUNTERS

  20 EN ROUTE FOR CHINA

  21 TRIUMPH AND DISASTER

  PART FOUR

  22 BACK TO ENGLAND

  23 SHEILA AND THE WAR

  24 BACK TO SEA

  25 CANCER OF THE LUNG

  26 DELIVERANCE

  PART FIVE

  27 TRANSATLANTIC SOLO

  28 THE STORM

  29 NEW YORK AND NEW PLANS

  30 ATLANTIC AGAIN

  31 BACK TO NEW YORK

  32 HOME AND AWAY

  APPENDIX: SOLO ATLANTIC RACE 1960 SAIL CHANGES

  FOREWORD

  GILES CHICHESTER

  The book of The Lonely Sea and the Sky ends in the winter of 1963–64 but the story continued, and how! My father packed three and a half major adventures, four books and all manner of awards into the final years of his extraordinary life. I grew up thinking it was quite normal for one's father to disappear for months to sail across the Atlantic on his own. Consequently, I have always had a slight difficulty in explaining why he was driven to take on these challenges as it seems perfectly natural to me that a man should wish to pit himself against the forces of nature (and other difficulties) and to strive to be either first or fastest.

  In 1964 he was runner-up in the second solo transatlantic race but he made the crossing in thirty days, thereby giving himself the satisfaction of cutting his original time. The winner was Eric Tabarly, a much younger man in a new, faster, lighter boat. More or less immediately after, my father started planning a new boat for the return match in four years time. That year, 1964, held a big adventure for me as I was to sail back with him from America. This time it was just the two of us; my mother had to fly back to hold the fort in the family map publishing business. It was a special time for me. It is rare that a father and son are able to share such an experience, just the two of them, for nearly four weeks at sea.

  I learned a valuable lesson from my father very early in the voyage. A fitting for the roller reefing gear on the main boom broke during the first night at sea. I was suffering from seasickness, no doubt made worse by all the partying I had left behind in Newport, and generally feeling like death and unable to do anything. Or so I thought. When this irascible shout came down for me to get up on deck and give him a hand, instead of lying below feeling sorry for myself, I stirred my stumps and got up. I had discovered that an emergency could overcome the awful lassitude and nausea of seasickness. Once you get going it speeds up the recovery.

  Of course, he could perfectly well have fixed it on his own but his irritation at the breakage and me lounging on my bunk combined with his natural impatience to get the thing repaired as soon as possible, so he hauled me out. A good example of being tough to be kind and I was grateful; afterwards. After that, the trip went well. I more or less pulled my weight to earn his respect and we moved on from father and son to become great friends as well.

  Perhaps the worst moment of the t
rip was the arrival back in England because it meant the adventure was over and real life beckoned. In the excitement of reaching the Beaulieu River, home port to the Gipsy Moths, I remember thinking that life was good, my father a great success (The Lonely Sea and the Sky had been a big bestseller that year) and yet it would probably never be this good again. Was I wrong! I also remember my friends at school, where I had one more term to complete before taking the university entrance exam, bringing me back down to earth by displaying a studied indifference to what I thought (and still do) was a pretty big deal – to sail across the Atlantic.

  That autumn my father got together with John Illingworth, one of the great names on the RORC offshore racing scene who specialised in designing light displacement and fast yachts, to plan the next boat. The original intention was to win back the single-handed transatlantic trophy in 1968; the working title for the project was 'New York Express'. However, before long my father got to thinking that he had already sailed east to west three times single-handed whereas he had some unfinished business dating back to 1931: his attempt to fly around the world alone that had been brutally cut short. And so he turned his sights on sailing around the world alone along the single-stop route of the nineteenth century wool clippers. His cousin, Tony Dulverton, generously came in as his major backer to pay for the new boat. Gipsy Moth IV was long and fast all right, but she turned out very tender and forty per cent over budget. Even with a lot more lead poured into the keel, she still heeled right over in any sort of wind. The overrun on cost was resolved by selling the newspaper rights and drawing in sponsorship money, none of which was as easy as it sounds, especially as my father was up to his neck in the physical preparations for the trip.

  At the time, 1966, quite a few doubts were expressed as to whether my father could handle such a large boat on his own in the most demanding conditions imaginable. He was to celebrate his sixty-fifth birthday en route and his imminent pensioner status was just one of the factors underlining the extent of the challenge he was undertaking. These days long distance and round the world solo sailing seem commonplace and easy because so many voyages have been made since the first single-handed transatlantic race in 1960, but in 1966 very few solo passages had ever been made around the world and none on the route of the clippers rounding the three Capes – Good Hope, Leeuwin and Horn. This became apparent from all his research about the route and its hazards, which was published in an anthology in the spring of 1966.

  Nowadays, marine radiotelephony for small craft can girdle the globe but it was considered quite remarkable that my father had been able to send almost daily reports from the Atlantic via his Marconi Kestrel. I think that it was the financial necessity of sending stories back to the papers combined with the technical availability of doing so using various shore stations en route that turned my father's personal adventure into something that caught the imagination worldwide. How fascinated he would be at all our modern communications, computer technology and the pace of change (he once tried teaching me how to use a slide-rule but I was a poor pupil!).

  At any rate, he had the best there was at the time; in particular a yacht built with great strength from six skins of cold-moulded plywood glued together. He met his fair share of challenges on the way. At sea his most testing moments came in the Southern Indian Ocean when his self-steering broke under the strain and then, just a few hours after leaving Sydney for the second leg, a huge wave rolled Gipsy Moth IV nearly all the way over and dumped the carefully-stowed stores on the cabin sole. The self-steering had broken because the boat was difficult to balance and control downwind which put huge pressure on the gear in big seas. His initial reaction was to think he had to give up but, after sleeping on it, he devised a home-made arrangement using the staysail to counter-balance the tiller, it worked and he carried on. Pretty impressive stuff. As for the knockdown in the Tasman Sea, it must have seemed the fates were against him after all the effort to get things ready.

  Many people felt the rigours of rounding Cape Horn were just too risky for this old man (nowadays we know that sixty-five is not so old) and there was much pressure on him not to continue his circumnavigation. Well, he took the setback in his stride, made necessary repairs and spent days sorting everything out as well as sailing, navigating, cooking, communicating, writing a full journal or log and so on.

  Rounding Cape Horn proved to be exciting but manageable. The real challenge to his navigation skills came on the approach to Drake Strait after several days of poor visibility and no sun observations to fix his position. Instead of being one of the loneliest places in the world it turned out to be quite crowded; HMS Protector came down from the Falkland Islands to see him round and a light aircraft with journalists and photographers from The Times to record the moment. After that, possibly the most stressful moment came in the North Atlantic when a launch was chartered by the press and BBC to go out, find him and film him in mid-ocean (much against my mother's wishes at the time). Appropriately enough it was called Sea Huntress and my father made it pretty clear they were unwelcome. The story of his voyage had been big news for some time, but by comparison with the pressures public figures are put under nowadays from the media it may seem he got off lightly. However, it was a harbinger of the attention he was to receive on his return.

  When he finally reached Plymouth Sound it truly was to a hero's welcome. It was very exciting stuff for me to be involved as a hanger-on, but for my father the shock of arrival after four months at sea alone was considerable. Not long after his return, he collapsed and was diagnosed as suffering from an ulcer caused by 'poor diet at sea', so the medics said. Perhaps they came from the same school as the types who had diagnosed carcinoma of the lung and given him six months to live back in 1958, but it seemed pretty obvious to us that it was the transition to shore life and all the demands made upon him that brought it on. It must have seemed as though everyone wanted something from him, a simple request here, a little thing there, and pretty soon he must have felt completely drained.

  He recovered and we sailed on the last leg up to London where the Queen bestowed upon him the accolade of Knighthood at Greenwich in the first public investiture for many decades. We had only been told the evening before, it all seemed like a fairy tale, a storybook adventure come true. After that he was fêted at Mansion House by the Lord Mayor and greeted by massed crowds outside. It all had the feel of a latter-day Elizabethan maritime adventurer come home in triumph. It was that rare event, a good news story enjoyed by almost everyone.

  There was little or no rest for the wicked, however, because he had to turn his hand to writing the book of the voyage in time to catch the Christmas market that year. Once that was completed, life began to settle back into a more normal pattern, whatever that may be for a man like him. Many things needed attention, including a visit in early 1968 to New Zealand to see the forest and catch up with old friends who had noticed that he had stopped in Australia and sailed past New Zealand. In 1969 my mother organised a family holiday in the Algarve in Portugal. I have a photo I took of the two of them looking fit, healthy and happy: he was already planning the next adventure. The holiday was interrupted for him when he went back to London to commentate on the moon landings that year. I recall he said he preferred his sort of adventure because the astronauts were almost entirely dependent on others whereas he was largely reliant on his own resources at sea. Clearly it was an addictive sort of lifestyle and, having done a fair bit of short-handed long-distance sailing myself (mostly after he died), I can glimpse the appeal. Life at sea can be very fulfilling because you have an objective, your destination; the means to accomplish it, your boat and yourself; and a self-contained life without external distraction other than the natural challenges of the ocean. The navigation aspect is particularly interesting and enjoyable.

  That same year, he published a book on keep fit exercises with a very long title, of the sort fashionable at the time, based on his own regime as followed during the trip by steamer-ship from England
to New Zealand in 1968. It was not as successful as he had hoped. He also started work on Gipsy Moth V, his final boat. For it, he went back to the same designer, Robert Clark, who had drawn the lines for Gipsy Moth III. They also went back to Ireland to build it, in Crosshaven this time, and we had a lot of fun travelling to Cork to watch construction work and fitting out. She was launched in summer 1970 and I shall never forget the party laid on by Dennis and Mary Doyle who owned the yard. There is nothing quite like Irish hospitality!

  Gipsy Moth V was the most beautiful and the most fleet of the four boats. The next step was for my father to find a worthy challenge. He became very interested in the 200-mile day (24-hour runs) and cast around for a course where he could have a chance of achieving it over a long distance and where the starting and finishing points were fixed. The old clipper captains used to record some very fast runs in the middle of the ocean which could neither be validated or challenged easily but were important for their claims to be fastest to deliver the cargo and passengers. My father lighted upon a course from West Africa to Central America that was 4,003 miles along the Great Circle route through the trade winds.