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La Vuelta Al Mundo del Gipsy Moth
Sir Francis Chichester zarpó de Plymouth el 27 de agosto de 1966, cumplió en alta mar sus 65 años, y sin apenas ver tierra arribó a Sidney, tras 107 días de navegación. Después de un merecido descanso emprendió el camino de regreso, llegando a Plymouth el 28 de mayo de 1967. En el curso de su circunnavegación, el autor hubo de enfrentarse a los elementos adversos y batió varios récords, pero lo que entusiasmó a la prensa y las gentes de todo el mundo fue que un hombre que ya no era joven, superando los peligros y obstáculos, realizara una gran proeza individual en un periplo tan largo.
Este libro es la apasionante crónica, escrita por el mismo protagonista, de una de las gestas más importantes de nuestra época. Escrito en buena parte durante el período de navegación, es un documento excepcional para explicarse la entereza, la tenacidad y la valentía del extraordinario navegante solitario.
Este libro es la apasionante crónica, escrita por el mismo protagonista, de una de las gestas más importantes de nuestra época. Escrito en buena parte durante el período de navegación, es un documento excepcional para explicarse la entereza, la tenacidad y la valentía del extraordinario navegante solitario.
262 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
About the author
Francis Chichester
44 books14 followersAviator and sailor, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 51 reviews
January 28, 2026
An incredible feat for a man or woman at any age. In a way, it’s a testament everyone should read, however it definitely helps to have a knowledge of sailing ⛵️ nevertheless it’s not crucial. Imagine sailing through the Antarctic or Southern Ocean with its extreme cold and ferocious storms. One of the great true stories of human resolve and resilience.
January 20, 2015
This was my mother's book one of the ones I saved after she passed away. My first attempt to read it ended in failure because the first chapter is all about building and testing Gipsy Moth IV, and it sort of lost me.
Now, after reading all Patrick O'Brian's Aubry/Maturin series, Chichester's book was more accessible and understandable, though there was still plenty of sailing vocabulary I didn't get.
Francis Chichester set off from London/Plymouth in September 1966 to sail singlehanded around the world in Gipsy Moth IV. In May 1967 he finished the voyage in Plymouth, sailed on to London and was knighted by QEII with the sword QEI had given to Sir Francis Drake after he completed a circumnavigation.
Gipsy Moth IV sits on Greenwich Pier in London today, right near the Cutty Sark. I've been there a couple of times. It would be wonderful to see it again now that I know its life story.
Now, after reading all Patrick O'Brian's Aubry/Maturin series, Chichester's book was more accessible and understandable, though there was still plenty of sailing vocabulary I didn't get.
Francis Chichester set off from London/Plymouth in September 1966 to sail singlehanded around the world in Gipsy Moth IV. In May 1967 he finished the voyage in Plymouth, sailed on to London and was knighted by QEII with the sword QEI had given to Sir Francis Drake after he completed a circumnavigation.
Gipsy Moth IV sits on Greenwich Pier in London today, right near the Cutty Sark. I've been there a couple of times. It would be wonderful to see it again now that I know its life story.
August 16, 2007
Gritty, realistic telling of a remarkable feat. Chichester does absolutely nothing to glamorize his experiences under an amazingly grueling set of circumstances. A remarkable, curmudgeonly anti-hero who stunned the world IN HIS SIXTIES. A grumpy inspiration to all...
July 25, 2025
Sir Francis Chichester made the fastest solo sailboat circumnavigation in 226 days in 1967 when he was 65 years old and diagnosed with terminal cancer. His book about his voyage has become a sailing classic. This is another book my husband and I devoured when we owned our sailboat Quest.
January 27, 2016
Chichester's story of his 1966 solo sailing voyage around the world, at age 65. He did the circumnavigation west to east. The trip took 226 days with a single stop in Sydney, making it the fastest circumnavigation in a small vessel. In 1898, Slocum took 3 years with numerous stops, but did the more difficult east to west against the prevailing winds.
The book largely covers Chichester's day to day activities. It is interesting to see how busy he was with numerous sail changes, and numerous maintenance activities.
The Gypsy Moth IV was custom built for Chichester but turned out to have a number of sailing faults, such as a tendency to broach. Some of these were corrected in Sydney. It also had many equipment issues such as leaks and hardware that did not stand up to corrosion. The self-steering gear gave him regular trouble. Through much of the voyage, he seems to be fighting the ship.
In spite of this, he managed to do a very fast circuit, showing him to be a most resourceful sailor.
The book largely covers Chichester's day to day activities. It is interesting to see how busy he was with numerous sail changes, and numerous maintenance activities.
The Gypsy Moth IV was custom built for Chichester but turned out to have a number of sailing faults, such as a tendency to broach. Some of these were corrected in Sydney. It also had many equipment issues such as leaks and hardware that did not stand up to corrosion. The self-steering gear gave him regular trouble. Through much of the voyage, he seems to be fighting the ship.
In spite of this, he managed to do a very fast circuit, showing him to be a most resourceful sailor.
March 21, 2019
A true mariner's classic. Required reading for any sailor worth his salt and an important history for the field. A bit slow at times, but this was particularly interesting as it was around the last time of sea exploration without use of autopilot, weather tracking devices, or any satellite monitoring capabilities, all of which make this endeavor infinitely less precarious. Additionally Chichester's voyage marked the chief inspiration for the Golden Globe race the following year, which is in my own opinion an even better story especially as told in A Voyage For Madmen, which I highly recommend.
June 29, 2008
To think he undertook voyage at age 65 boggles the mind. One of sailing's great men...
October 6, 2014
This book, like Kon Tiki, exemplified real adventure for me and my siblings when we were growing up. Loved it and want to reread!
April 7, 2026
Although Sir Francis Chichester had been something of a British Charles Lindbergh in the 1930s, being the first to fly solo from Australia to New Zealand, he was still just plain Francis Chichester at the time of this story.
On this famous voyage he broke two distance and four speed records for a craft of his size, 53 feet but I think the antipodal nature of his route is most significant. (That means he passed through two points forming the ends of a line running through the center of the earth; in his case, the two points were somewhere off the coast of Portugal or Morocco and north of New Zealand.)
Although his route started and ended in Plymouth, the circumnavigation was completed at a point off Brazil that he passed through on October 3, 1966 and again on April 11, 1967, 190 days apart; he traveled an additional thirty-six days to and from that point and Plymouth, for a total of 226 days. Another important first of the voyage was that it was nonstop except for a forty-eight day layover in Sydney, not counted in the 226 days. In the first chapter of the book, “The Dream,” he says he felt he could save a lot of time by avoiding numerous ports of call which is true if you ignore the forty-eight days in Sydney. A true solo nonstop circumnavigation occurred within a year of his return but as often happens in the history of record setting, the early bird gets the worm regardless of its condition.
He doesn’t really explain why he ignored the Admiralty chart, the traditional Clipper Route and the advice of old salts in Sydney to continue on south of New Zealand but I think he felt it was wasted distance since the antipodal point was north of New Zealand.
It was only a few days after passing New Zealand that his yacht capsized, i. e., turned upside down. This event gets a chapter of its own in the book and is the nadir of the story and heightens the dread of the approaching rounding of the Horn, the crux of the trip but anticlimactic after the capsize. That moment was spoiled for Chichester by a Royal Naval vessel loitering there to radio chat with him and a Piper Apache out of Puerto Arenas that buzzed him. Perhaps he can be forgiven then for describing the Horn as a “black ice cream cone."
The capsize burst open the doors of all the cabinets and lockers and Chichester was two weeks putting everything back in its place. Belatedly he drilled holes in all the doors and tied them shut with rope.
Perhaps record setting was not his highest priority: He was mentally racing against the most famous clipper of them all, the Cutty Sark, on display in a dry dock in Greenwich since 1954. The clipper route had many tentacles, starting in Europe, usually Britain or Holland, extending down the length of the Atlantic and then spitting to go around Africa or South America and then on to diverse destinations. If Australia was a clipper’s final destination, for example, then Melbourne was usually where it went, not Sydney. Melbourne is an easier approach, not cluttered up with lots of little islands like the approach to Sydney which also gets its own chapter, “Bass Strait.” If Chichester had put in at Melbourne he might have broken the clippers’ 100 day average from Britain to Australia. As it was, he took 107 days to get to Sydney.
Another interesting chapter is “Two Thursdays” in with Chichester travels eastward across the International Date Line. I remember crossing it in the other direction on my father’s birthday so he didn’t have a birthday that year. That’s better than being born on February 29th though. It also brought back memories of the JFK assassination, on a Friday in Dallas but Saturday west of the Line. (Chichester uses “the Line” to mean the Equator but obviously I mean the IDL here.) There was an assassination conspiracy theorist named Lieutenant Colonel Fletcher Prouty, played by Donald Sutherland in Oliver Stone’s movie, who was in New Zealand, west of the Line, on Saturday, the day of the assassination there. The smoking gun in Prouty's theory was that the New Zealand newspapers reported the assassination the day before it happened. No “Dewey Defeats Truman” photos were provided in his book and I’ve often wondered if he had some sort of dyslexia vis-a-vis the Line. Chichester acknowledged that it tangled up his navigation computations.
On this famous voyage he broke two distance and four speed records for a craft of his size, 53 feet but I think the antipodal nature of his route is most significant. (That means he passed through two points forming the ends of a line running through the center of the earth; in his case, the two points were somewhere off the coast of Portugal or Morocco and north of New Zealand.)
Although his route started and ended in Plymouth, the circumnavigation was completed at a point off Brazil that he passed through on October 3, 1966 and again on April 11, 1967, 190 days apart; he traveled an additional thirty-six days to and from that point and Plymouth, for a total of 226 days. Another important first of the voyage was that it was nonstop except for a forty-eight day layover in Sydney, not counted in the 226 days. In the first chapter of the book, “The Dream,” he says he felt he could save a lot of time by avoiding numerous ports of call which is true if you ignore the forty-eight days in Sydney. A true solo nonstop circumnavigation occurred within a year of his return but as often happens in the history of record setting, the early bird gets the worm regardless of its condition.
He doesn’t really explain why he ignored the Admiralty chart, the traditional Clipper Route and the advice of old salts in Sydney to continue on south of New Zealand but I think he felt it was wasted distance since the antipodal point was north of New Zealand.
It was only a few days after passing New Zealand that his yacht capsized, i. e., turned upside down. This event gets a chapter of its own in the book and is the nadir of the story and heightens the dread of the approaching rounding of the Horn, the crux of the trip but anticlimactic after the capsize. That moment was spoiled for Chichester by a Royal Naval vessel loitering there to radio chat with him and a Piper Apache out of Puerto Arenas that buzzed him. Perhaps he can be forgiven then for describing the Horn as a “black ice cream cone."
The capsize burst open the doors of all the cabinets and lockers and Chichester was two weeks putting everything back in its place. Belatedly he drilled holes in all the doors and tied them shut with rope.
Perhaps record setting was not his highest priority: He was mentally racing against the most famous clipper of them all, the Cutty Sark, on display in a dry dock in Greenwich since 1954. The clipper route had many tentacles, starting in Europe, usually Britain or Holland, extending down the length of the Atlantic and then spitting to go around Africa or South America and then on to diverse destinations. If Australia was a clipper’s final destination, for example, then Melbourne was usually where it went, not Sydney. Melbourne is an easier approach, not cluttered up with lots of little islands like the approach to Sydney which also gets its own chapter, “Bass Strait.” If Chichester had put in at Melbourne he might have broken the clippers’ 100 day average from Britain to Australia. As it was, he took 107 days to get to Sydney.
Another interesting chapter is “Two Thursdays” in with Chichester travels eastward across the International Date Line. I remember crossing it in the other direction on my father’s birthday so he didn’t have a birthday that year. That’s better than being born on February 29th though. It also brought back memories of the JFK assassination, on a Friday in Dallas but Saturday west of the Line. (Chichester uses “the Line” to mean the Equator but obviously I mean the IDL here.) There was an assassination conspiracy theorist named Lieutenant Colonel Fletcher Prouty, played by Donald Sutherland in Oliver Stone’s movie, who was in New Zealand, west of the Line, on Saturday, the day of the assassination there. The smoking gun in Prouty's theory was that the New Zealand newspapers reported the assassination the day before it happened. No “Dewey Defeats Truman” photos were provided in his book and I’ve often wondered if he had some sort of dyslexia vis-a-vis the Line. Chichester acknowledged that it tangled up his navigation computations.
October 20, 2022
Plymouth-Sidney-Plymouth, del 16 de agosto de 1966 al 28 de mayo de 1967. El viaje más veloz alrededor del mundo de navegación en solitario en un pequeño velero, con una sola escala, 29.630 millas y 226 días pasados en la mar. Soñar es poner en práctica los sueños, y esto es lo que hizo F. Chichester a los 65 años de edad. Toda una hazaña que merece la pena conocer, una navegación sin gps, a base de las cartas náuticas y la orientación astronómica. Yo no soy marinero ni lo quiero ser, pero me ha resultado una lectura interesante, aunque algo repetitiva porque durante muchos días nos cuenta las operaciones y maniobras para llevar el velero a rumbo y sus rutinas diarias, las dificultades con las tempestades o con las calmas, los problemas con el motor, las velas o el comportamiento del barco en algunas circunstancias, además de otras anécdotas o singularidades que surgen en esta gran aventura. Como era de esperar el libro está cargado de términos marineros, por lo que también ha sido interesante ampliar el vocabulario en esta materia.
January 5, 2025
My favorite genres including sailing, adventure, and survival. It was an excellent read I enjoyed over several days. The only criticism is some of the chapters could use better editing, but it was a tough job making a book out of thousands of pages of his logs. This really gives you a view of adventure sailing in the 20th century, when positions had to be determined by dead reckoning and occasional sitings of solar bodies, which combined with trigonometry mathematical practical knowledge, could establish quite accurate locations on the globe. Using a sextant he was very accurate, but using an astrolabe you really need two people, as it required a horizon fix: very tough on a pitching boat! You also get the idea of the discomfort found on a monohull, always pitched over at 30 degrees or more! Recommended for anyone in the sailing community, as well as lovers of history, adventure, and survival.
October 21, 2020
I felt extremely sorry for poor unfortunate Sir Chichester on his disaster trip until I came across this line:
“I restored my morale next morning by having a shave. It was my first since leaving Sydney, and I was thankful to get rid of the irritation on my face from the beard growing there. It was tough shaving, and I had to stop and clean the razor six times when it clogged up and would not work.”
Then I realized that he has an uncanny knack for turning just about any description into an opportunity to bewail his misfortune, and I felt better about his trip which probably was ok. Tough old bugger though, I was a bit concerned about his diet of honey water and pink gins at midday, perhaps this is why he was always banging his leg?
“I restored my morale next morning by having a shave. It was my first since leaving Sydney, and I was thankful to get rid of the irritation on my face from the beard growing there. It was tough shaving, and I had to stop and clean the razor six times when it clogged up and would not work.”
Then I realized that he has an uncanny knack for turning just about any description into an opportunity to bewail his misfortune, and I felt better about his trip which probably was ok. Tough old bugger though, I was a bit concerned about his diet of honey water and pink gins at midday, perhaps this is why he was always banging his leg?
December 28, 2022
This book was very good if you like all the details about sailing. I do, but even then it was a bit exhausting to read. I didn't deduct any stars because the exhaustion and tedium are part of sailing around the world and the book wouldn't be accurate if it didn't go into these details or if it over dramatized the situation. That being said, the book does have a kind of dramatic arc, with the climax being Cape Horn, and the denouement being the homecoming and afterwards by a journalist JRL Anderson and his wife Sheila Chichester. I mostly already knew all the boat terminology, but the boat diagram at the end would have been nice to refer to earlier.
August 21, 2018
I did enjoy this story but maybe I am a little spoiled with some of the other similar tales I have read. It just seems the middle was a lot of sail changes. I realize that's what was actually going on at the time but still boring all the same. That being said it was made up for with some great stories of capsizing and huge storms. you do have to respect anyone who can pull something like this off. I am glad I read this story as it been on my list for quit some time.
July 16, 2026
An account of an epic single-handed journey circumnavigating the world by sailboat starting from Plymouth, England via The Cape of Good Hope, Bass Strait, Sydney, Australia, and Cape Horn, then back to Plymouth, England between August 27, 1966 and May 28, 1967.
I was ten years old at the time, so his name leapt out at me when I first glanced at the cover of this book.
A remarkable story, and a truly remarkable man.
Highly recommended.
I was ten years old at the time, so his name leapt out at me when I first glanced at the cover of this book.
A remarkable story, and a truly remarkable man.
Highly recommended.
September 10, 2017
An excellent read about and written by a 65 year old man who circumnavigates the world east to west throught the most dangerous and isolated seas including the conquest of the Horn. On top of that, he does it singlehanded in record breaking time.
February 21, 2018
An outstanding accounting of one man's journey around the world alone. Fascinating and exhilarating. Sir Francis is a wonderful storyteller. His several month trip was filled with tales of dolphins and storms, sail changes and determination. An adventure for a lifetime.
June 9, 2020
Overly technical for the average reader (more than 50% must be about raising or lowering sails alone) and far too modest for what he achieved, it's still an incredible record of an incredible journey.
August 29, 2020
This was a really good and interesting book, if you understand all of your sailing lingo really well. Otherwise, it is hard to read and kinda painful. I decided to take the loss on this one. Just not for me, hence the 3 stars.
January 27, 2022
An excellent story and saga. Occasionally it gets a little bit in the weeds with some technical sailing jargon, but by the end of the book you might even feel ready to sail solo around the globe. (Not really.)
A sailing classic.
A sailing classic.
June 6, 2023
The first half of this book, the sail to Sidney, earns three stars. In this section the author did a great deal of complaining about the performance of the boat. The trip from Sidney back to Portsmouth was exciting earning five stars.
April 23, 2019
Written by Sr Francis Chichester himself, his account of his solo circumnavigation at age 65 on Gipsy Moth IV.
April 21, 2020
Awesome book if you geek out on sailing adventures or any adventure with high stakes and high drama. I loved that all this was done before GPS, satellite phones and autopilots.
June 12, 2020
One of my favorites! Incredible adventure, extraordinary person.
January 17, 2021
I really enjoyed this book. A great sailing adventure for anyone who loves sailing.
August 25, 2021
A great sailing adventure for anyone that likes sailing. A great achievement but got a bit repetitive at times. Nevertheless a great man.
October 4, 2021
Loved this book when I read it. It carried me away.
December 11, 2024
First person account of a daring adventure by Francis Chichester in “Gipsy Moth Circles the World”.
More at
https://vramonline.wordpress.com/2024...
More at
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June 23, 2025what one driven person can do! fantastic story of a solo round the world voyage still has plenty of interest despite it being over 50 years ago.
August 16, 2025
Sir Chichester is a great sailor, but his sailboat, the Gypsy Moth, was such a bad design. It is amazing what he put up with on this journey.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 51 reviews