The Lonely Sea And The Sky

At the age of 18 and with a taste for adventure, Francis Chichester emigrated to New Zealand with only ten pounds in his pocket. With the impetuousness of youth he tried his hand at a myriad of jobs, and by the age of 26 he had been a farmhand, a boxer, a shepherd, a lumberjack, a member of three trade unions - the Firemen's, the Miners' and the Timber Workers' - a railway worker, a gold prospector, a coal miner, a door-to-door salesman, and a land agent. And it was only then that his real adventures began. It would be from a chance business venture that Chichester would discover the passion for travel that would change his life. With a fellow risk-taker, he helped to establish an early aviation company and began to fly the planes - though not necessarily with an immediate talent. But enthusiasm and experience made him a leader of the field, and in 1929 he embarked on his most famous flight: a solo enterprise in the "Gipsy Moth" from England to Australia. He was the second person ever to accomplish that feat. He was a great sailor as well as aviator, and he won a trans-Atlantic race in the yacht "Gipsy Moth III", and in 1967 he was knighted. This is Sir Francis Chichester's autobiography - a tale of ardour and adventure, of intrepid endeavours on land, on the sea and in the air, and of the physical and mental challenges he faced.