Three men and a boat… Bombay, December 1965 and Robin Knox-Johnston (centre) looks just as tired as every other yachtsman who has been working flat out trying to get a new yacht ready for her launching. A replica of the William Atkin design is currently being completed for the forthcoming 2018 Golden Globe Race


32ft double-ender from plans by the Amer- ican William Atkin. Suhaili – the name given by Arab seamen in the Persian Gulf to the southeast wind – was launched by the wife of the Kuwaiti Consul on 19 December 1965. And it was in this boat that Knox-


Johnston and two crew, brother Chris and radio officer colleague Heinz Fingerhut, by now virtually penniless, sailed for home via Muscat, Salalah, Mombasa, Zanzibar, Dar-es-Salaam, Mtwara, Beira and Lourenço Marques to Durban and finally on from Cape Town, arriving 74 days later at Gravesend. ‘Suhaili,’ he wrote in A World of My Own, ‘had proved herself a seaworthy boat, able when close-hauled to sail herself for long spells without atten- tion because of her remarkable balance.’ Suhaili had averaged 112 miles a day, ‘faster than we had expected’. After ‘…living on her for two years I


knew her like the back of my hand.’ Deter- mined to enter the Golden Globe, he approached Colin Mudie for a 53ft steel schooner. ‘But I needed £5,000, and I might as well have wanted the moon,’ he wrote. ‘Everything led to the obvious answer, go


brothers, RK-J went to Berkhamsted School in Hertfordshire (the sports centre now bears his name). Of Ulster and Eng- lish stock, Presbyterian Scots who fled the Lowlands in the 17th century, it is sug- gested that the last pirate hung on the west coast of Scotland is among his ancestry. From the earliest age he read voraciously


of the sea, and could reel off the names of the British naval fleet, his heroes Nelson, Cook and Drake, his first boat a self-built 10ft canoe (which capsized). He subscribed to Light Craft magazine rather than foot- ball comics. Soaking up ‘… every detail’. It was a childhood many who were


brought up in those post-war years can relate to: a simpler time when getting afloat in little dinghies meant plimsoles and yellow buoyancy aids. Safety grew from a growing sense of self-reliance through mistakes and mishaps. Not particularly academic – high marks


in history and geography – a failure in physics meant no Royal Navy career (although he rose to the rank of lieutenant commander in the RNR, a naval reservist until 1989 and now honorary captain), rather an apprenticeship in 1957 aboard the British India Steamship Navigation Company’s 7,500-ton cadetship Chind- wara, which carried two clinker dinghies and which he sailed (and capsized) when- ever he could. By 1965 he had gained his Master’s ticket, was married and had joined BI’s Dumra as Second Officer. This training as a Merchant Navy officer


is key to RK-J’s character and approach to sailing: disciplined, cautious, confident, prudent, a calculated risk taker. He will admit that the subtleties of trimming a code zero are not his forté. But he will hold a steady course until his eyelids drop; can work a sight on the back of a fag packet (he is an unrepentant smoker ‘but only to gauge the wind direction…’); will reef a little early, keep a safe distance off a dangerous headland; check his rig daily and take care to keep his crew fed (more of that later). In short, the accomplished seaman. ‘I still believe that the Merchant Navy


training gave me the right approach to the sea; never take it for granted…’ He talks about driving Enza hard, but not so hard as to break her. Off Ushant, in a near- hurricane, she trailed warps, chain and even an anchor in an effort to slow her down. ‘To win a race you still have to finish’ is


a classic Knox-Johnston-ism. However, as he is also fiercely competitive, simply finishing is not enough; he was bitterly disappointed that breakdowns and elec- tronics failures marred his Velux Race, one that he has no intention of repeating (today he is thinking more about returning one day to his favourite West Highlands cruising grounds). In 1964, based in Bombay, Robin


Knox-Johnston decided to build a yacht. Suhaili steadily took shape at the Colaba Workshops where adze and bow saws fashioned Burmese teak into keelson and planking to produce a sturdy, if heavy,


in Suhaili.’ If he had doubts about her speed he had none about her ability. Suhaili was the making of Sir Robin, and she is with him today, refastened, re-rigged, stripped and repainted, much of the work done by her owner, practicality being another invaluable character trait. Before the start of the Velux 10 years


ago he talks of watching his rivals Mike Golding and Alex Thomson with envy as a squad of helpers attended to every facet of preparation, leaving the two skippers freer to concentrate on the increasingly impor- tant PR machine. Meanwhile, RK-J, belea- guered by well-wishers – he was quietly pleased to have been more sought after than the younger guns – beavered away against the odds to prepare Saga for sea in the three months he had left himself since buying the old Imoca 60 Fila, Giovanni Soldini’s 1998 Around Alone winner. Golding and Thomson fell out then


crashed out, the former ironically coming to the rescue of the latter. Exhausted at the start, frustrated by breakdowns, furious at the incompetence of experts, the 67-year old at least finished the race. This hands-on attitude surfaced at an


early age; the rebuilding of a 1927 Austin 7 occupied more time than his school - masters would have wished, if they had known. ‘At home in Beckenham I had my own little workshop in the cellar where I would disappear for hours on end making things, boats mainly,’ he writes in Force of Nature, an ability to make do and mend that ‘must have been in my genes’.


SEAHORSE 43


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