GIPSY MOTH CIRCLES THE WORLD the sixty Five year Old Navigator's own account of His 226 Day Lone Voyage Including the Conquest of Cape Horn (Hardcover)

by Sir Francis Chichester (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Coward McCann INc (1968)
• ASIN: B000P528YG
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #794,272 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Voyage around the World, September 11, 2008

By	BYF "Backyard Flix" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

From Chapter 1:

"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 learned how to fly a seaplane, converted the Gipsy Moth into one, and set off again from Sydney. How I flew into the 1/2 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.


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."