Chichester’s Legendary GM IV, Myth and Reality – copyright Peter Marsh
In the 1960’s, It was English pioneer aviator and sailor Francis Chichester who became famous for winning the first Singlehanded Trans-Atlantic Race in 1960 in 40 days at the age of 59. He then invented the concept of racing the clock in 1962 with a 36-day crossing. In the second OSTAR in 1964, he met his match in the shape of a young French naval officer, Eric Tabarly–or rather his boat met its match!
Sir Francis Chichester in the companionway of Gipsy Moth IV. Note track too close to handholds, main sheet with poor angle to boom, sheet too close to his head, winch outside pram hood.
I was one of the dozen or so onlookers at the Millbay Docks in Plymouth on May 21-22, 1964 observing the small fleet moored away from the quay side. Tabarly’s 44′ lightweight plywood ketch Pen Duick II was the first boat ever designed for solo racing—with windward performance in mind, since the course was against the prevailing winds. But he was up against a dozen Englishmen and two multihulls–surely one of them would hold off the foreigner?
Seconds after the start on May 23, I watched Tabarly hoist a red spinnaker and sail away from the fleet. In this one moment, he had raised the bar of single-handing to a new level. He went on to win by four days in 27 days. Chichester couldn’t keep pace with the Frenchman’s boat or his strength, but he already had another “first” in mind where endurance would be the key, not speed.
Gipsy Moth IV rounding Cape Horn under storm jib. Note the lack of a gallows, so the boom was dropped on the cabin roof.
His new challenge would draw the attention of sailors in many lands to the historic clipper ship route round the world, first in a book reviewing the history of the route, and then on the water. He commissioned the well-known naval architects Illingworth & Primrose to design a boat that would take him where no yachtsman had ever gone before—”along the clipper way” from England to Australia and back in less than a year. This challenge was formidable and a real step into the unknown–especially considering his age of 65.
Along the Clipper Way in 1966
His achievement of completing this voyage in a 55′ ketch was huge–this was the first time any yacht, crewed or singlehanded, had successfully made that epic voyage. His time of 226 days (an average speed of five knots) may look pedestrian alongside today’s incredible 80-day standard in the Vendee Globe, but re-wrote the record book and succeeded in his goal of equalling the average times of the clippers.
The English welcomed the yacht and skipper home in a huge outpouring of enthusiasm dubbed “Chichesteria.” The crowd when he stepped ashore numbered over half a million. He was knighted on the lawn in the Royal Naval College in Greenwich and GM IV became arguably the most famous yacht in the world .Since this was truly the greatest piece of solo navigation ever, the media, the public and the sailors all assumed he must have been sailing the greatest yacht ever!
So the mythical status of his boat was confirmed even before he set foot on shore. But there was one downside to this legend: the skipper disliked it from the first day he stepped on board–and hated it with a vengeance when he returned. He never sailed it again–that says something about how he felt. Throughout the trip, he never stopped complaining about its shortcomings: the lack of stability, failure to self steer, lack of headroom, etc. 
“It is like a charging elephant being stopped by a fly whisk,” he wrote, complaining how even small waves would slow Gipsy Moth down. (I’ll add another quote here when I find it.) Today, when new media make it easy to vent in public, top sailors can get very emotional and critical–but we never see them publicly criticize a designer. This appears to be an unwritten rule of modern yachting; the designer stands above the fray–even when the keel falls off!
Chichester had no such reservations–so neither do I! In Sydney, he had the boat hauled out, and insisted that the keel had to be extended aft to fill in the space under the rudder. This was equivalent to a mutiny against his design team, and the Aussie newspapers had a field day with this scandal in the upper-class world of yachting. Chichester had convinced himself that this would improve the balance, but he never indicated any notable change in the boat’s handling, and this would be entirely subjective anyway.
It is very unlikely that it had any effect at all. But the boating press kept quiet and has remained mute on the subject ever since, especially after the plan to resurrect the boat and sail it around the world again. Mike Golding took the boat out alone in the Solent–the video shows it heeled at considerable angle and Mike hanging on to the helm with both hands. He wrote about it in Yachting Monthly, November 2008. Does anyone have a copy? Today, no one bothers to mention the pitching or the weather helm. All the comments are of the “Rule Britannia, Hearts of Oak” type.
Here is what the Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Jeffery wrote in 2005 after sailing the restored boat: “Having sailed the yacht, it does have a bouncy, quick action that reduces its speed alarmingly and is not particularly pleasant to steer. Clearly, Chichester was a very particular client. But he was oddly unengaged in preparing a
Gipsy Moth IV was probably the most publicly villified yacht in history
vessel so crucial to fulfilling his ambition of beating the wool clipper’s best circumnavigations of 230 days, visiting the yard only twice a month during its construction and undertaking only short sea trials. Then Jeffreys managed to make amends by writing “Yet 38 years on, it looks and feels a surprisingly modern yacht thanks to its lightness and advanced ideas. Can anyone explain this contradiction?
Chichester died in 1972, and the old boat was left out in the sun and rain for nearly 40 years in its concrete slot beside the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, my home town. it was totally neglected until 1997, and by then the rot had well and truly taken hold. In 2003, with the 40th anniversary of the great voyage approaching, an appeal was started by Yachting Monthly magazine to restore the boat and sail it round the world again. Ownership was transferred to the non-profit UK Sailing Academy, and the original builder, Camper & Nicholson took on the restoration, at cost. Nonetheless, it cost over half a million dollars to replace all the rotten wood.
Around the World Again
In 2005, the yacht joined a round-the-world rally in Gibraltar and safely crossed the Atlantic crewed by a mixture of boating journalists, licensed skippers and disadvantaged youth. All went well until the navigator took a break and they ran onto a coral reef in the low-lying Tuamotu Islands in Polynesia. It took a major effort from Smit, the Dutch salvage specialists to patch the hull, and tow it 200 miles to Tahiti, where it was loaded on a ship and arrived inauspicously in Auckland, New Zealand.
The NZ America’s Cup team donated space for a round-the-clock repair job to get the boat back on the schedule for the 40th anniversary return to Sydney. The return trip via the Suez Canal was completed without any more disasters and the crew returned to Plymouth on May 28, 2007—40 years to the day since Chichester had been greeted by a huge welcome.
Over 90 young people participated in the trip and as far as I can tell, none of the crew made any negative comments about the yacht—at least in public. It was laid up and sold in 2010 to a private individual, who created the Gipsy Moth Trust to keep it in non-profit use. It returned to the public arena in 2013 to join the Diamond Jubilee fleet on the Thames, and is now working on the Solent on charters for students and adults.
(The Gipsy Moth name came from a range of sturdy biplanes built by de Havilland 1925-1935. Chichester flew one from England to Australia in 1929.)
OPINION from Peter Marsh
From 1968 to 1972, I often passed the Gipsy Moth IV sitting in a concrete pit next to the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, where I lived. It looked totally unimpressive, with nothing to distinguish it from any other boat of this size. For all the money that was poured into it, there was nothing I could see to distinguish it from 1930’s offshore cruiser-racers like the S & S ketches Stormy Weather and Dorade.
In the book of the voyage, he was quite specific: he had wanted a boat that could “surf down the great seas of the southern ocean,” instead he ended up with a typical narrow English hull with absurdly-long overhangs and too little sail area. He constantly complained it was too big, too heavy, too tender etc. It always seemed very strange to me that this great sailor had spent a small fortune having this bespoke design built by the finest boatyard in the world, then found it was the complete opposite of what he said he wanted!
The designers, Illingworth and Primrose, were well known for fast, light boats, yet the
design they drew was a narrow hull with a long narrow counter stern and bow. The overhangs occupied 14′ 6″–27.5% of the overall length, with slack bilges, pinched stern, and a keel-hung rudder too far forward. In addition, the rig was terribly small, confined by Chichester’s maxim that he could not handle a mainsail of more than 500 square feet.That really handicapped the designers.
This was another oddity. Despite his long association with H.G. Hasler, the world’s leading authority on alternative rigs, who could handle his Chinese lugsail rig while seated in the companion way, Chichester, showed no interest in adding any labor-saving rigging. He had pioneered many short-cuts in navigation, but like the great majority of yachtsmen at the time, left all the hands-on work for his yacht to the traditional experts: architects, sailmakers, riggers etc.
It is well-known that he was a cantankerous old man who wasn’t likely to take advice kindly, so none of those professionals cared to risk suggesting any alternative ideas on deck gear. If he had been more involved, he would surely have tried a simple set of lazy jacks from the mast to the boom, or other sail-stowing aids, which would have allowed him to control a bigger mainsail, and a wider sheet traveller that would have controlled the boom far better. But his yacht was fitted with the same ineffectual deck gear used by the weekend sailor in the 1960’s.
Other 1960’s Designs
In 2013, I visited the amazing City of Sail–Eric Tabarly Museum in Lorient. Brittany. In the foyer, I found a complete set of exquisite models of all the Pen Duicks I—VI. Looking at the model of the 44′ Pen Duick II that beat Chichester’s conventional 40′ cutter Gipsy Moth III in the 1964 OSTAR by four days, I suddenly saw an uncanny resemblance with the Gipsy Moth IV above the waterline.
The ketch rig on Pen Duick II stood out from the conventional craft at the 1964 OSTAR.
The same overhangs, same rig, in the same proportions. It could be a coincidence. but I suspect Chichester was haunted by that damn French boat–so he insisted on a similar rig. But Tabarly never used that rig again, and cut off the stern overhang on Pen Duick! He was also successful with a schooner rig that rated better. Anyway, Illingworth and Primrose went their own way and drew the hull they thought would fit the purpose, and fitted the only rig that would keep the mainsail to 500 square feet.
In retrospect, it’s clear to me that the yacht should never have left the Solent, and Chichester really was handicapped by this compromise design with its pathetically short waterline on the 53 ‘ hull. (If it is so good, why are there no copies of this great yacht?)
the Gallant 53 was a pioneering fiberglass yacht, first molded in Sussex in 1966.
Of course, Chichester could have saved time and money by buying a Van de Stadt fin keeler, the Gallant 53 that was being molded at Tylers yard–an hour’s drive from Portsmouth. This seaworthy design was the biggest fiberglass production yacht in the world at the time. It was a smaller sister to Van de Stadt’s famous 70′ Stormvogel. In the 1965 Fastnet Race, Chichester was the navigator on the “Stormy”–so had seen how well the fin keel worked in real racing conditions.
By 1967, Angus Primrose had set up his own business, and drew three radical, fin keel racers for the OSTAR around 50 feet long. He followed that with the 45′ light displacement, fin-keeled, junk-rigged schooner Galway Blazer for Lt. Co. Bill King. It took many years before King succeeded in circumnavigating, but there is no question that Chichester would have benefited from that type of hull.
Bernard Moitessier’s 40′ steel ketch Joshua is sailed by students all summer from its base in La Rochelle
For comparison, Bernard Moitessier’s 40′ low-budget steel ketch Joshua carried more sail and made faster passages in the same waters in 1968. Naomi James, the first woman to complete a fast non-stop circumnavigation in 1977, sailed a Gallant 53. This landmark in yacht design has maintained its value and reputation and is still considered a very attractive, seaworthy fast cruiser. But of course, no self-respecting yachtsmen in the 1960’s would have dreamed of buying a mass-produced plastic boat–and that certainly included