Sailing Round The World
Beginning in December 1971, Rosie sailed around the world from Gibraltar via Australia, with her first husband, Colin Swale and daughter Eve on their 30-foot (9 m) catamaran, the Anneliese. The trip was part sponsored by the Daily Mail newspaper and also by Independent Television News (ITN) who provided them with a camera to record their own news reports of the journey. They sailed 30,000 miles (48,300 km) across the Atlantic, through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific, stopping at the Galapagos Islands, the Marquesas, Tahiti and Tonga, before reaching Australia in 1973. They were the first catamaran to round Cape Horn.
Although both Swale and her husband were able to sail and had prepared as well as they could, the trip had its risks, and it nearly ended in disaster 3 times: when Rosie fell overboard in the Caribbean 900 miles (1,450 km) from the closest land; again when she needed emergency medical treatment in hospital; and a third time when the whole family suffered arsenic poisoning from a meal of unsoaked beans. The hardships were survived, however, and the voyage was a significant navigational achievement, using only an old Spitfire compass, nautical charts and a sextant, in the days before GPS. By the time the family finally returned to Plymouth, Rosie had not only completed her first book, Rosie Darling (often working below decks on her typewriter for up to six hours at a time), but had also written her second book, Children of Cape Horn.
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Read more about this topic: Rosie Swale-Pope
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