A few words from Francis Chichester after all...

Thanks to Paul Gelder, the eagle-eyed editor of Yachting Monthly, who clearly has a longer attention span than me and points out that Francis Chichester did indeed give a short speech upon arrival in Plymouth in 1967, and that it’s in the clip I linked to below.

Quite so. Chichester replied: “Thank you very much, my Lord Mayor. I certainly agree with your last sentence: I’d like some peace and quiet, although you’d think after four months alone I’d had enough peace and quiet. But I’m looking forward very much to getting ashore and tasting some of the delights of shore life, as a change from sea life.

“It gives me an enormous pleasure to return to Plymouth. I look back and think of the great sailors who have left from Plymouth and come back to Plymouth, and to be reckoned one of those is a great honour for me.”

Paul also says there is more archive footage of Chichester sailing back home in Gispy Moth here