Francis Chichester

In 1967, Britain got a fresh one.

Francis Chichester sailed a catch called the Gypsy 4 across the world alone.

He arrived in Sydney and came home to Knighthood.

That's how big of a deal this was before.

And at points, his made-up runs were close to triple what he was actually covering.

The papers reported his progress as the kind of sailing that breaks records.

Francis Chichester told people privately that he didn't believe a word of any of it.

Faking a voyage at sea in 1968 took more skill than sailing a real one.

But to figure out this mystery, we're gonna have to go back almost two years to a completely different sailor arriving in Plymouth Harbor to one of the biggest homecomings Britain had seen in years.

[Instrumental music] In May of 1967, Francis Chichester sailed into Plymouth Harbor, and something like a quarter of a million people showed up to watch him come home.

He had just sailed around the world all alone, stopping only once in Sydney, Australia.

And at the time, what he'd done, it was absolutely enormous because nobody had done that before.

And somehow almost everybody believed him.

Almost everybody.

Francis Chichester was suspicious almost immediately.

So was a sailing writer named Craig Rich.

And actually, I think a lot of people know me more for the podcast than they do for the YouTube channel.

So if there's something there that's useful, the Mariner Podcast, and associated with that is the Mariner's Library, where I read old sailing books, which is what I was here for, like this one by Sir Francis Chichester.

We're gonna have a look at that as I cross the Atlantic now, um, crossing over with our crew mid-October.

We do have a couple places still on board if, uh, if anybody wants to come, uh, wants to sponsor the Global Solar Challenge.

And actually, I think a lot of people know me more for the podcast than they do for the YouTube channel.

So if there's something there that's useful, the Mariner podcast and associated with that is the Mariner's library where I read old sailing books, which is what I was here for, like this one by Sir Francis Chichester.

We're going to have a look at that as I cross the Atlantic now, crossing over with our crew mid-October.

We do have a couple of places still on board.

And I would say if there's any Olympic training that you can do as an offshore sailor, it's competing on the Figaro.

It started with Eric Tabaly beating Sir Francis Chichester and a bunch of Brits back in the 1960s, which took everyone by surprise.

And that really gave birth to everything that's gone on in the French offshore scene since then.

And pretty much all the top sailors at the highest level of offshore experience in the French scene, come from a Figueroa background.

Uh, we...

Last time we spoke I talked about that, that I was inspired by, by Francis Chichester and Robin Knox-Johnston, and those early circumnavigators.

Uh, and that was, that was my objective, was to circumnavigate solo.

Uh, and stopping was disappointing, but it didn't stop me circumnavigating solo.

Why they call it a green card, I don't know, but that's what they need to set sail and be in the race.

So obviously he's stopped now, so he would potentially just be going into the Chichester Class, which is, you know, in commemoration of Sir Francis Chichester-

Yeah

... who I suppose laid the way for the Golden Globe by doing his one-stop round-the-world.

And after my parents passed away, I had this enormous archive of photographs and also so many memories as a child attending all the amazing launchings of these big ocean going yachts.

we built for Hammond Innes, the Mary Deer, we built for Francis Chichester.

So these were blue water ocean going and international sailors crossing the Atlantic.

And perhaps later on when I come to talk about crosswinds, perhaps that's because the salt water is definitely in my writing veins um so yeah it was a it was a really I suppose um started as a family obligation rather because my brother had flitted off to um Maine uh to live so I was the one with the um with the archive weighing down our loft so um wow okay