Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Round the world Sir Robin: Why I talk to my yacht
50 y rs on from epic vo y age, he tells of bond with boat
FIVE decades after he became the first person to sail solo, non-stop, around the world, Sir Robin Knox-johnston still has a special bond with the yacht which helped him make history.
So much so that Sir Robin, 79, admits he often talks to Suhaili.
He says: “Oh yeah, I talk to her. Give her a little pat.
“She’s a good little boat – well, when she does what I tell her. When we have a difference of opinion, she’s not so nice.”
Even so, Suhaili is his “most treasured possession”. He adds: “I can’t imagine life without her.”
Sitting below deck at Gosport Marina in Hampshire, he recalls setting sail on June 14, 1968, in the Golden Globe challenge, a race he had not even officially entered.
He says: “They announced I was in it – they hadn’t consulted me.”
In the event, he was the only person to finish, travelling 30,000
miles around the world in 312 days in the 32ft 5in long, wooden boat, which he had helped build in India.
He navigated with a sextant, collected rainwater to survive, and had scary encounters with sharks.
And he recalls a close call with a whale, saying: “I heard a sound like a train letting off steam. I thought, ‘There’s no steam trains here, I’m in the middle of the Pacific’.
“There was a blue whale about 200 yards away. I thought, ‘If he gets amorous, I’ve got problems’. I sort of tiptoed past him.”
He endured batterings from 80ft waves, and remembers one occasion when he was on deck and saw a huge breaker heading his way.
Sir Robin adds: “I climbed the rigging and the wave covered the boat. It was me and two masts and nothing else for about 1,500 miles.”
He then spent three hours pumping out gallons of water.
When his radio broke, it was assumed he had perished, when in fact he was having a “lovely” time. He says: “I could do what I wanted day in, day out, and it was perfect.”
Sir Robin later co-founded the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race and says: “I suppose I will be remembered for the Golden Globe, but I think what we achieved with the Clipper Race is pretty fantastic.”