'Chichester's extraordinary feat was the result of constant unremitting attention to detail.

It is a report by a great adventurer, who also happens to be a writer, of one of man's greatest of lonely enterprises.'- Harper's 'We get the day-to-day story of the planning, the decisions, his own lively reports of what the days and nights were like, the good and bad adventures. He has served men by living their dreams of acting with tenacity and courage under pressure.'- Time 'Sir Francis Chichester has managed to reawaken the world to one man's capacity to seek and to endure. Such was the voyage his book is a fine account of it with nothing left out.'-Alan Villiers, Saturday Review 'A remarkable feat, a moving story of conquest by the unquenchable human spirit, a determined old man's gesture of defiance at the modern world. The Sailor's Classics edition features a new introduction by series editor Jonathan Raban. It inspired the first solo around-the-world race and remains a timeless testament to the spirit of adventure. First published in 1967, just months after the completion of Chichester's historic journey, Gipsy Moth Circles the World was an instant international best-seller.

This handsome first volume in The Sailor's Classics series restores in its entirety for a new generation of readers Francis Chichester's extraordinarily candid personal account of his adventure. The story of how the sixty-five-year-old navigator single-handedly circumnavigated the globe, the whole way battling hostile seas as well as his boat's numerous design flaws, is a tale of superhuman tenacity and endurance to be read and reread by sailors and armchair adventurers alike. Among the handful of such tales to emerge in the twentieth century, one of the most enduring surely must be Sir Francis Chichester's account of his solitary, nine-month journey around the world in his 53-foot ketch Gipsy Moth IV.

And from time immemorial, few narrative genres have had the power to so stir the emotions or captivate the imagination as the true account of a lone adventurer's triumph over the titanic forces of nature. The delight in stories well told is as intrinsic to who we are as a species as toolmaking or song. 'Sir Francis Chichester has become a genuine hero-perhaps the greatest of the adventurers of his time.'- Time

Gipsy moth circles the world