Gipsy Moth Circles the World (The Sailor's Classics) - Tapa blanda

'Sir Francis Chichester has become a genuine hero - perhaps the greatest of the adventurers of his time' - "Time". From time immemorial, few narrative genres have had the power to so stir the emotions or captivate the imagination as the true account of a lone adventurer's triumph over the titanic forces of nature. Among the handful of such tales to emerge in the twentieth century, one of the most enduring surely must be Sir Francis Chichester's account of his solitary, nine-month journey around the world in his 53-foot ketch Gipsy Moth IV. The story of how the sixty-five-year-old navigator singlehandedly circumnavigated the globe, the whole way battling hostile seas as well as his boat's numerous design flaws, is a tale of superhuman tenacity and endurance to be read and reread by sailors and armchair adventurers alike.This volume in "The Sailor's Classics" restores in its entirety for a new generation of readers Francis Chichester's extraordinarily candid personal account of his adventure. First published in 1967, just months after the completion of Chichester's historic journey, "Gipsy Moth Circles the World" was an instant international best-seller. It inspired the first solo around-the-world race and remains a timeless testament to the spirit of adventure, and is included on "National Geographic Adventure" magazine's list of Greatest Adventure Books of All Time. Francis Chichester's 1967 singlehanded circumnavigation set a blazing record for speed. He completed the voyage with just one stop and 226 days at sea. It was an amazing performance; that he was sixty-five years old made it the more so. Chichester then sat down to write one of the great narratives of modern voyaging.'A remarkable feat, a moving story of conquest by the unquenchable human spirit, a determined old man's gesture of defiance at the modern world. Such was the voyage; his book is a fine account of it with nothing left out' - Alan Villiers, "Saturday Review". 'Chichester's voyage was a classic of its kind. His book is a classic document of self-punishing endurance. Chichester was in his own way an explorer in the tradition of Scott and Shackleton. Unlike Scott and Shackleton, in these pages he bares himself and his mood-swings to the reader's gaze, and one is privileged to be his intimate on this loneliest and most harrowing of voyages' - from the introduction by Jonathan Raban.

Sir Francis Chichester was a lifetime adventurer. In 1929 he flew his plane solo from London to Sydney. In 1931, while trying to complete the circle from Sydney back to London, he was nearly killed when he flew into a half-mile span of steel telephone wires in Katsuura, Japan. As the years passed and flying was transformed from a pioneering activity to a technologically sophisticated one, Chichester turned to sailing as an outlet for his restless spirit. He made a record-breaking solo crossing of the North Atlantic in 1962, and then conceived his around-the-world voyage as his next challenge, saying, 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. Chichester died in the 1970s.