The Lonely Sea and the Sky

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.

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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.

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.

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

FOREWORD BY GILES CHICHESTER
INTRODUCTION BY J. R. L. ANDERSON

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

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 trip 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.