Francis Chichester To Revisit N.Z.

Press, Volume C, Issue 29682, 28 November 1961, Page 20

Francis Chichester To Revisit N.Z.

{From th* London Correspondent of “Th* Press")

Yachtsman and aviator, 1 60-year-old Francis Chichester, who was i awarded the Johnston Memorial Trophy in 1931 for "the best feat of air |i navigation”—his lone 1 flight from New Zealand to Sydney—has been further honoured in London when he received the Institute of Navigation’s gold medal for winning last year’s solo Atlantic yacht race. ; In making the award, the 1 president of the institute, I Wing-Commander E. W. Anderson said: “I consider Mr Chichester the greatest single-handed navigator of the age.** "That,” Mr Chichester told me, "was a very nice thing to hear.” He said he was planning to participate in a further single-handed race across the Atlantic (from Plymouth to New York) In 1984, after which he would, accompanied by Mrs Chichester and their son, Giles, sail down to Panama and on to New Zealand. Giles aged 15, was at preseht attending Westminster School. Mr Chichester had intended to sail out to New Zealand earlier. His yacht had been designed for that purpose. But “Atlantic race” commitments had caused some reshaping of his plans. By occupation a mappublisher In London, Mr Chichester recently helped to found Britain’s first seaplane club, which is expected to become active at Lee-on. Solent next summer. The dub, which has 40 members, has been given a Tiger Moth. It has bought some floats and intends to

build its own seapiano— one of the few in private ownership in the country. “I am very fond of New Zealand, especially of those more uninhabited areas and I am looking forward, as my wife is, too, to seeing it once again,” he Mid. She was there in 1938, but only for a year. “We returned home to England as war was looming up,” Mr Chichester, during the latter half of the war, was senior navigation officer at the Empire Central Flying School. He claims, by the way, to have written “half a million words on navigational instruction.” It is interesting to recall that Francis Chichester, on his great flight in 1931, used, for finding Norfolk and Lord Howe Islands, a system of navigation devised by himself for the purpose. It involved using a sextant for taking shots of the sun; there was no radio to help out then. This subsequently became, during the war years, standard drill for the Coastal Command. Of the Norfolk—-lord Howe stretch, Mr Chichester had this to My: “I had only nine and half hours petrol range for the Journey which took me seven hours 40 minutes. I could not afford to make a mistake.” -Tt seems hardly necessary to add that Mr Chichester is a man who keeps himself in wonderful physical condition. He wIH be about S 3 when next he makes the sole Atlantic yacht trip—no voyage for the sluggard.