It’s tough to make a list of the 10 saltiest sailors since Soundings started publishing 60 years ago. Our first list had dozens of possible candidates. Sailors like Lin and Larry Pardey had already been featured in previous anniversary issues, but to get it down to 10 sailors we had to make some tough choices. To ease our task, we threw in some additional salty souls in the list on page 66. We suspect you’ll think of someone we should have included. If so, drop us a line at editorial@soundingspub.com, and we’ll publish your most persuasive arguments in a future issue.
SIR FRANCIS CHICHESTER
When the 65-year-old British yachtsman Sir Francis Chichester sailed into Plymouth, England, aboard his 54-foot ketch Gipsy Moth IV in May 1967, he became the first person to sail around the world alone via the great Capes, an accomplishment that made him as famous as the Beatles.
Chichester had completed the route of the great clipper ships, with a single stopover in Australia, and did it in 226 days. Upon his return to England, a half million people lined the shoreline to greet him. Along with Sir Francis Drake and Capt. James Cook, it made him one of England’s three greatest circumnavigators. Soon after he returned to England, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him with the same sword used to knight Drake in 1581.
Chichester was an entrepreneur and aviator. In 1929, he flew a de Havilland Gipsy Moth from England to Australia in 41 days and later became the first man to fly across the Tasman Sea. In the 1950s, his business made him rich enough to spend a lot of his time ocean sailing. In 1960, he won the first Observer Single-Handed Trans-Atlantic Race (OSTAR). Chichester was the archetypal eccentric Brit, which he showed during his 1966-67 circumnavigation. He donned a dinner jacket in the middle of the Atlantic
