Sir Francis Chichester

In 1958, his doctor told Francis Chichester he was going to die of lung cancer. He was fifty-seven years old. His wife stopped him eating meat, milk, butter, cheese and almost anything interesting. He was only living on vegetables, but Chichester decided to start a new hobby. He learnt to sail a yacht.

Chichester always knew what he wanted and worked very hard to get it. When he was eighteen, he left England and travelled to New Zealand, where he started a successful business in forestry and construction. Ten years later, he returned home, learnt to fly a plane and hoped to fly it back to New Zealand alone. He did it – but in forty-one days. Chichester wanted to get there in fifteen, a few hours faster than the great Australian pilot, Bert Hinkler.

So, when the doctors told him he was going to die, Francis Chichester wanted something new and learnt how to sail. Two years later, he won the first race across the Atlantic Ocean alone. Six years after that, in 1966, he left England on 27th August and, 226 days later, he arrived back. He became the first person to sail around the world on his own. The last man to do this took three years.

Chichester became a very famous man in his home country. They even made a stamp with his face and boat on it. It was the first time in Britain that a living man – and not a king or queen – had his picture on a stamp.

But this was not enough for Chichester. In 1970, at the age of sixty-nine, he tried to sail 4,000 miles (or 6,400 km) in twenty days. He couldn’t do it. It took him twenty-one!

Francis Chichester died of cancer in 1972, fourteen years and many adventures after the doctors told him he was going to die.