High Seas: With the Moan of the Wind And a Barrel of Beer

"I'm not very effective when other people are around," Yachtsman Francis Chichester once said about his penchant for solo performances. "Any attempt to diverge from this lot makes me half a person." Whether he was roaming the English countryside as a boy, piloting a seaplane from Australia to Japan as a young man, or crossing the Atlantic in a small sloop in middle age. Chichester always faced danger alone. Though he has never escaped fear ("A spot of panic is good for you, keeps you alive"), Chichester has loved the rewards of mastering...

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