LIVING LEGEND SIR ROBIN KNOX JOHNSTON

In 2017 Journalist Emma Bamford – a former Clipper Race crew member – caught up with him for Sailing Today magazine.

From the ground, divested of her sails and bowsprit, the 32ft long-keeler looks like any other old boat on the hard of any yard – brick-red antifouling, a fresh coat of white paint on her topsides, a stripe of peeling blue masking tape between. It is only when you look closely at her owner – dressed as many a British yacht owner in a faded polo T-shirt and paint-spattered deck shoes – that the identity of this boat becomes apparent. This is Suhaili, the first boat to ever circumnavigate the world non-stop; and this is her owner, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston.

It is remarkable to think that such a doyen of the sailing world would be in the yard, getting grubby working on his boat. Isn’t Suhaili a national treasure, for one, protected for the nation, like the Cutty Sark or Mary Rose, in the purified air of a museum somewhere?

For a while she was: the 32ft Bermudan-rigged, teak-built ketch (44ft length over spars) went on display at the National Maritime Museum Greenwich in 1997, but her planking started to shrink in the controlled atmosphere, so Sir Robin removed her in 2002.

For the past three years, Suhaili has been on the hard of a Solent boatyard, slowly being restored back to her former glory – note, not modernised, but restored – ready for her owner to take her cruising again.

Sir Robin does most of the work on Suhaili himself, with help from a shipwright and his grandson.

When we arrive at the boat, Sir Robin shouts from the hard: “I can’t hear the sander!”

“I’m sanding by hand!” comes the replying shout from inside the boat by Ralph, 16 – who certainly has enough dust covering him to prove it.

Sir Robin and a couple of friends built Suhaili in the early 1960s in a Bombay dockyard. “It took foreeever,” he says, stretching out the word to add emphasis. Her keel was laid in 1963 and she was finished in 1965, and sailed first, with a crew of three, comprising Sir Robin’s brother, Christopher, and radio officer Heinz Fingerhut, to South Africa. Then, after her skipper took a break to earn some much-needed cash in Durban by stevedoring and captaining a trading coaster, they sailed her on to Britain.

Following his groundbreaking circumnavigation in the Sunday Times-sponsored Golden Globe race in 1968/69, she would go on to be cruised quietly by Knox-Johnston through the 1970s and 1980s. And now she’s back in the yard, being put into tip-top condition ready for the start of the Golden Globe Race 2018 – the event being held to mark the 50th anniversary of what Sir Robin acknowledges is probably his biggest achievement – being the first person to sail solo, non-stop around the world.

I’m not using journalistic licence when I say that you wouldn’t know, looking up at her on her stand on the hard, what this yacht was.

It is only when we climb up the ladder that we see how dated she is. The cockpit, by today’s standards of cruising boats, is remarkably exposed. There’s a flat teak deck, with a square pit in the centre, deep enough for sitting.

There is no protective coaming, no sprayhood, no steadying grab-rail within easy reach of the helm. The sheet winches – no self-tailers here – are the originals, embossed with ‘Tuff Fittings’, and they are incredibly small, perhaps only four inches in diameter, and were fitted in the 1960s. “I went to Beaulieu Boat Jumble and picked up a spare,” he tells me. “It goes in my Suhaili box. There’s all kinds of things in there.”

The idea of Sir Robin riffling through odds and ends at the boat jumble is incongruous, but actually here, sitting with him on the coach roof in his paint-speckled shoes in the August sunshine, I can believe it – just another bearded bloke looking for bits for his boat.

Much of the work to date has been in replacing the fastenings. “We stripped her out so I could renew the fastenings – 1,400 of them – and replace them with bronze,” Sir Robin says. “We put new keel bolts in and we’ve been rebuilding her quietly ever since.”

Born in March 1939, in Putney, London, Sir Robin, the eldest of four brothers, went to sea in the Merchant Navy in 1957 as a Deck Officer. In 1962 he married his childhood sweetheart, Suzanne (who tragically died in 2003 from ovarian cancer). Their one child, Sara, was born in Mumbai in 1963.

Merchant seaman Sir Robin went on to compete in the Golden Globe Race of 1968 with Suhaili, becoming the first – and only – of the nine original competitors to complete the journey, and sailing into Falmouth Harbour on 22 April 1969, to be greeted by customs officials with the traditional demand of “Where from?” The single word answer was “Falmouth”.

He was made a CBE in 1969 and went on to success in various race campaigns. In 1994, Sir Robin and Peter Blake won the Jules Verne Trophy for the fastest sailing circumnavigation of 74 days 22 hours 18 minutes and 22 seconds.

He was knighted in 1995, has been named UK Yachtsman of the Year four times, the ISAF World Sailor of the Year, and in 2015, Sailing Today readers voted him Sailor of the Year for competing in the Route du Rhum single-handed race from St Malo to Guadeloupe at the age of 75.

Sir Robin also founded the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race. Others might claim the Golden Globe victory was his greatest achievement, Sir Robin says, but “in a way, I think the Clipper Race is. We have introduced nearly 5,000 people to sailing now. All of them have crossed an ocean, and about 700 have sailed around the world.

GOLDEN GLOBE RACE FACTS

The Golden Globe 50th Anniversary Race will start on 16 June 2018 and will have a maximum of 30 entrants.

The rules are strict – all Skippers may use only the same type, or similar equipment and technology that was carried aboard Suhaili in 1968/9.

They must carry a GPS chart plotter in a sealed box for emergency use only. Boats must be between 32ft and 36ft, built before 1988 and be of a particular construction; three replica Suhailis are being made.

The course will be mainly in the 40- 50° band of latitude, going westabout, and there will be a gate in Storm Bay, Tasmania, where competitors must drift for approximately 90 minutes, meet the race director, media, and family, and pass over film/photos/letters, then sail back through the ‘gate’ without touching shore, or any person, or being resupplied.

Sailing Today is the monthly magazine for adventurous cruising sailors. Subscribe via the website www.sailingtoday.co.uk or follow @SailingTodayMag for the latest news and features.