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to make regular radio reports to the Guardian and the Sunday Times.
On landing he was pledged to provide television interviews. That
meant that, while part of him was all too conscious of his aches and
pains and the battering Gipsy Moth had sustained, and quite ready
to be satisfied with what was already a considerable achievement,
his iron determination had to resist the temptation and the bland-
ishments of hundreds of people, known and unknown, who had his
best interests at heart.
He threw himself into the boat's refit. She had been the cause
of much of his distress during the outward voyage. Anxious to be
away from England, he had not left adequate time for sea trials and
only discovered Gipsy Moth 's many defects when it was too late to
do anything about them. Chichester spent five and a half weeks in
Australia, doing everything that could be done to his floating home
and then set out once more on a calm, sunny summer's morning
escorted by a flotilla of Sydney harbour craft. Next day two things
happened: Chichester was prostrated by food poisoning and Gipsy
Moth was capsized by a cyclone. She righted herself but much of
the laborious work of five and a half weeks had been wiped out.
Several pieces of equipment had gone overboard. The self-steering
gear was damaged, as was the electric pump. The cockpit was badly
gashed. Below decks food, tools and clothes were sloshing about in
salt water. Feeling like death, Chichester had to set to pumping out
the cabin by hand and making running repairs. For many brave sail-
ors this would have been the last straw. They could have put back in-
to Sydney without dishonour. The world would still have applauded
a gallant effort. But Francis Chichester was one of a special breed. He
sailed on.
The next hazard he had to face was the Horn. It was the one
part of the journey he had always dreaded but there was never any
thought in his head of steering for the Panama Canal; that, to his
mind, would not have qualified as part of a true circumnavigation.
 
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