AN INQUIRY has begun into how one of Britain’s most famous boats ran aground on a Polynesian reef, endangering her teenaged novice crew and curtailing the re-creation of an historic voyage.

Gipsy Moth IV, the 53ft ketch in which Sir Francis Chichester made the first solo one-stop circumnavigation of the globe, was in a dry dock in Tahiti yesterday after a nail-biting rescue.

Antonia Nicholson, 32, Gipsy Moth’s skipper, was being quizzed at the headquarters of the UK Sailing Academy, at West Cowes on the Isle of Wight, as to how the vessel ended up on her side on the coral of the Rangiroa atoll.

Experts in navigation from the Royal Navy and Merchant Navy are examining the captain’s log, charts and evidence from the vessel’s global positioning system.

“It is inevitably a pilotage error,” said David Green, the academy’s chief executive, said. He said that he had been unable to ascertain who was at the helm as the boat ran aground.

Sir Francis’s fragile craft had been rotting in a concrete casement in Greenwich Dock since he steered her home in triumph in 1967. A campaign by Yachting Monthly and the academy, backed by the Princess Royal and blue-chip companies, led to a £300,000 restoration. Gipsy Moth IV put to sea last September to retrace the original voyage. On each leg, a new skipper and mate would crew with three youngsters from disadvantaged backgrounds.

On April 30 the ketch was cutting through calm water in the notorious Toumotu archipelago north of Tahiti when she hit the reef. The crew scrambled into rescue boats. Ms Nicholson slept on the beach to stop any looting.

Paul Gelder, editor of Yachting Monthly, had flown to Tahiti to meet the boat for his magazine’s centenary edition. “I ended up photographing her on the bloody reef,” he said. “It was heartbreaking.”

The hull was holed, the cabin flooded and, in the season of tropical storms, there was every chance the famous craft would be pounded to pieces.

Captain Burt Kleijwegt, a salvage expert and Gipsy Moth devotee, called to offer help. “A mechanical digger drove out on to the reef like something out of Dr No,” Mr Gelder said. “It lifted the boat.” Sixty islanders placed sandbags beneath the boat and helped to build a slipway of planks to the edge of the reef. The hull was patched up. But the team still needed a towboat.

Then, in a stroke of diplomacy almost unheard of in British maritime history, the French navy saved the day by lending a tug.

After six days on the reef, Gipsy Moth IV was hauled off and bobbed upright. She will be carried by a cargo ship to Auckland for repairs before sailing for Sydney and a rendezvous with the Princess Royal in Sydney on July 12.

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