Currently, the Vendée Globe is in full swing. It is the world's toughest sailing race, going around the world by yourself non-stop in a fast sailboat.This 'Everest of the Seas' has been sailed since 1989 but there was one Briton who completed it much earlier. That was the eccentric Sir Francis Chichester. Typical a Briton of his time: stoic, determined, single-minded. A man who belonged to the same outer category of pioneers and explorers as, for example, Ernest Shackleton, George Mallory and Sir Ranulph Fiennes.
RISK
The route on which Chichester embarked on 27 August 1966 was the same as the great clippers sailed a hundred years earlier, on their trade missions between Europe and the Far East. Or the most direct sea link between the major continents, before the Suez Canal and Panama Canal existed.
This was not only the fastest route, but also the riskiest, exposing sailors to the fiercest elements and long passages on treacherous open seas, far from land and safety.
Chichester completed it all by himself, on a 16-metre two-master ketch called Gipsy Moth IV. On his return to Plymouth in May 1967, he received a hero's welcome and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. In 226 days, he had sailed more than 29,500 miles (47,600 kilometres).
ROLEX
Sir Francis Chichester sailed alone, but had a faithful ally always nearby: his Rolex Oyster Perpetual. In 1968, he wrote: "My watch was ripped off my wrist several times. When I was working on the foredeck or using it to navigate in conjunction with my sextant, it suffered several hard knocks and was flooded with seawater. But it did not budge and kept ticking quietly.
Incidentally, Chichester was not the first adventurer to rely on Rolex's soundness:
UP THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN
On 29 May 1953, two men motivated to the bone succeeded in becoming the first to conquer the world's highest mountain, the 8848-metre Mount Everest. To honour this achievement, Rolex launched its Explorer line in the same year.
THE GREATEST DEPTH
On 23 January 1960, a vessel seemingly from another time sailed in the Pacific Ocean, some 320 kilometres off the coast of the small island of Guam. It was the bathyscaphe Trieste, with Swiss oceanographer Jacques Piccard and US Navy lieutenant Don Walsh on board. The craft submerged and kept descending, until it reached a record depth of 10,916 metres. On its hull was an experimental watch, the Deep Sea Special, specially designed to withstand the enormous pressure at this depth. When the Trieste resurfaced nine hours later, it was found that the experiment had succeeded: the watch was still working perfectly.
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