London to the Antipodes and back, without a dime.
We started out penniless. Nick Boyd and I were waiters at the Great American Disaster on Beauchamp Place, in London.
Nick had the stupid idea to try to circumnavigate the world leaving London, sans money. He asked me to join him, and I was stupid enough to say yes. Highlights of the trip included eating garbage in Paris, packing fish in Venice and working our passage on ships (to name just a few). 187 days, 17 hours and 45 minutes later, we earned the Guinness World Record for circumnavigating the world starting with no money or provisions. We set off from our “local,” the former Lowndes Arms, off Belgrave Square. This is us pictured on the cover of The New Zealand Herald, February 28, 1975, having completed a voyage to the Antipodes Islands (the opposite point on the globe from London), 400 miles off the coast of south New Zealand. Few people on earth have ever been there, and if you had you would understand why.
London > Ramsgate > Calais > Paris (Les Halles Rungis Girondis) > Auxerre > Grenoble > Cessana > Turino > Milano > Verona > Mestre (Venizia) > Chioggia > Padova > Bologna > Brindisi > Corfu > Patrus > Athens > Istanbul > Kizicahamam > Ankara > Togas > Sivas > Erzurum > Nazik > Tehran > Koramshah > Tigris River > Kuwait City > Persian Gulf > Gulf of Oman > Arabian Sea > Laccadive Sea > Bay of Bengal > Andaman Sea (via Singapore) > South China Sea > East China Sea > Kashima > Yokohama > Tokyo > Philippine Sea > Pacific Ocean > Auckland > Mt. Cook > Queenstown > Lumsden > Gore > Dunedin > Port Chalmers > The Roaring Forties > The Antipodes > Port > Chalmers > Dunedin > Christchurch > Pacific Ocean > Champericio > The Panama Canal > Christobol > Rotterdam > London
Chipping and painting, forty feet up without a safety harness on the German ship, Baadanstein.
Front page of The New Zealand Herald, February 28, 1975.
Circumnavigate the World
NOVEMBER 2, 1974