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 ...
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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.
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Add this copy of The Lonely Sea and the Sky to cart. $9.44, fair condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Baltimore rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Halethorpe, MD, UNITED STATES, published 1985 by Pan Macmillan.
Add this copy of The Lonely Sea and the Sky to cart. $9.45, fair condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Reno rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Reno, NV, UNITED STATES, published 1985 by Pan Macmillan.
The author was an intrepid adventurer of the early days of solo flight and solo around-the-world by sailboat. His exploits-and his life- are fascinating and he is also a very good writer.
I don't think there are many adventurers of those early days of flying and sailing who have written about what their life was like- and what the world they lived in was like. Actually are there any? Well in this story you get a real flavor of what the early days of flying basically by the seat-of-you-pants was like and the world as it was then.
I was so enthusiastic about the book my husband took it out of my hands when I finished and read it with the same enjoyment.
