A piece of sailing history for sale - Gipsy Moth IV

by Des Ryan on 10 Sep 2010 A piece of sailing history is for sale - and you get a pretty good yacht as well. Gipsy Moth IV', the 54 ft (16.2 m) ketch built by Camper and Nicholson, and made famous by Francis Chichester when he became the first man to circumnavigate the globe single-handed in 1966/7, is again for sale.

She was the first round-the-world yacht designed specifically for that task, and perhaps the last to be a central part in such a popular tale of British patriotism. Chichester was knighted for his accomplishment, and on his return became a national hero on a scale unknown by the sailing heroes of today.

After the voyage, the boat was half-interred in a concrete bunker at Greenwich, south-east London. She sat there for years, in the shadow of the Cutty Sark, until a project initiated by Yachting Monthly and the United Kingdom Sailing Academy (UKSA), hauled her out and did a complete restoration in a record-breaking five months, during 2005.

She then commenced another circumnavigation, skippered by Richard Bagget and changing crews of disadvantaged youths. On April 29, 2006, when just 200 miles from her next landfall of Tahiti, after a navigational blunder, Gipsy Moth ran aground on a coral reef at Rangiroa, an atoll in the Tuomotus, known as The Dangerous Archipelago in the Pacific Ocean.

The yacht was seriously damaged. After six days, a major salvage operation was undertaken with Smit, the Dutch big ship experts who were called in by the UKSA, with local help from Tahiti and Rangiroa. After a day-and-a-half spent patching up the holes in the hull with sheets of plywood, the yacht was successfully towed off the reef into deep water on a makeshift 'sledge'.

She was towed to Tahiti and put on a cargo ship to be taken to New Zealand. She finally completed her circumnavigation without further mishap, and was welcomed back to Britain by Giles Chichester, Sir Francis's son. Since then she has been based at the UKSA in Cowes where she takes young people on adventurous and educational sailing trips as well as taking paying members of the public on board.

Now the sailing academy is selling her. Sue Grant, from yacht brokers Berthon, said there had been great interest. ‘She is half boat and half historic object. She is the grandmother of all single-handed yachts that followed. She is such an important thing.

‘She has been restored to how she was at the time of the record. There are modern electronics but they are hidden behind the original control panel.

According to the broker, although the craft was venerated by yachtsmen, Sir Francis was not in love with it. He once said: ‘Gypsy Moth IV has no sentimental value for me at all. She is cantankerous and difficult and needs a crew of three – a man to navigate, an elephant to move the tiller and a 3ft 6in chimpanzee with arms 8ft long to get about below and work the gear.’

Her asking price is £250,000, and if you would like to know more, go to their www.berthon.co.uk!website, or email enquiries [at] berthon.co.uk