The painter known only as “Toxic” is putting the final coat on the hull beneath a giant bubblewrap, the cost of which has Sir Robin Knox- Johnston rumbling, but the canting keel has arrived, the mast is being repainted and the electrician and engineer are due the following day. Temperamentally speaking, the clouds have blown over and the sun is shining. “I’m in a better mood than I was this morning, put it that way,” says Britain’s most famous mariner, ancient or modern.
Knox-Johnston had forgotten how much of the stress of round-the-world sailing comes before the start. Too much to do, not enough time to do it . Some calculations have remained stubbornly immune to the technological revolution which Knox-Johnston will attempt to bridge when, at the age of 67, he reaches the start line of the single-handed Velux 5 Oceans round-the-world race next month, roughly 38 years after his last historic solo voyage.
Seeking out the then young naval officer at a party before his departure, one old captain assured Knox-Johnston that sailing solo non-stop round the world was impossible. “He also added for good measure that if it was possible, I wasn’t the man to do it,” Knox-Johnston recalls. “Bloody fool.”
The fool, though, did have a point. When he set off in Suhaili, on June 14, 1968, Knox-Johnston did so with sponsorship totalling £5, a stack of tinned food, 120 cans of beer, a makeshift self-steering mechanism designed on his garage floor, a barometer borrowed from the wall of his local pub, 50 books, a shortwave radio that packed up after a couple of months and a mighty overdraft.
Suhaili was a 32ft wooden ketch built in Bombay that looked no more like a racing vessel than a Morris Minor does a Ferrari. But 313 days later, a battered and barely recognisable old craft sailed proudly into Falmouth Harbour to win The Sunday Times Golden Globe, the first round-the-world race. Asked by the harbourmaster his port of departure and destination, Knox-Johnston replied “Falmouth” to both questions.
Pronounced “distressingly normal” before the start by a psychologist, he was deemed exactly the same at the end, a tribute to his naval upbringing, his loner’s nature and his determination to prove people wrong. Of the nine starters, he was the only one to reach the finishing line.
The intervening years have not always satisfied a restless spirit. He set up the Clipper Round-the-World race for amateur crews a decade ago, has been part-businessman, part-adventurer, part-celebrity, and full-time national treasure. His brand of self-help conservatism didn’t find favour with the electors when he tried politics.
The last five years have been spent away from the sea, nursing his wife, Sue, who was suffering from ovarian cancer, and then coping with her death, a far tougher ordeal than fighting the elements. The need to snap out of his mood of reclusiveness has, in part, prompted this brave new challenge.
“It’s taken me two years to get over it, but I’ve done that now,” he says. “Now it’s time to get on with it and I have probably done exactly the right thing, psychologically, by going back to what I love. Sailing, competing, challenging myself, all the things that I need to do to start again.”
The idea of competing in the race dawned slowly, not unlike his initial trip, which turned from possibility to necessity during Suhaili’s maiden voyage from Bombay to England. Rumours that a Frenchman was aiming to circumnavigate the globe stirred the patriotism in Knox-Johnston then, now his cause will be the rising tide of ageism in society. The “youth fetish”, as he terms it.
“I’m trying to send a message out in two ways,” he explains. “First, to a wider constituency, to say, ‘Listen, value the experience and expertise of these older people’ and second, to say to older people, ‘Look, if I can do this, you can.’ People don’t have to slump in front of the TV just because they’re retired; you’ve only got one life, so paint it in bright colours.”
His Open 60 racer, already a proven winner, was initially christened Grey Power. On Friday, it will be renamed Saga Insurance after Knox-Johnston’s main sponsors. Either way, the notion of a pensioner helming yachting’s equivalent of a Formula One machine through the most inhospitable seas on the planet has the potential to change human perceptions as radically as the slip of a lass, Ellen MacArthur, first did on the Vendee Globe.
But sailing has sped on since Knox-Johnston first went to sea, the rest of the skippers in the fleet are, on average, 25 years his junior — the youngest, Alex Thomson, one of Knox-Johnston’s proteges, is a mere 32 — and far more conversant with the technical complexities of the modern racing yacht. His beloved Suhaili belongs in the sailing equivalent of Jurassic Park.
In place of sextants and tables is the GPS (global positioning system) that charts his course every three seconds, weather forecasts arrive by fax several times a day, speeds have quadrupled and humanity is on watch every minute.
One of the aspects of this trip Knox-Johnston most dreads is the constant call of the mobile phone and the shrill demands of the fax machine, all essential ingredients of a modern sponsorship-led race but damaging to the romantic idyll of one man and his boat. Life on board is safer now, Knox-Johnston believes, but he also expects it to be rather more stressful.
“With Suhaili we set out on a race for survival, not speed. Nobody knew what would break or if we’d all go mad. But the basics remain unchanged, whatever the difference in technology. Winning or losing is mostly mental. Chess with pull-ups, I call it. That’s where Ellen is so strong, while you’re lying awake thinking, ‘Should I change the sail now?’ she’s doing it.
“On the technical front, I prefer to keep it as simple as possible. Too much information and you’ll only confuse yourself. I can keep an eye on my rivals, which I couldn’t do last time, and that will be interesting. But, for me, the most interesting time will be the first two days of the race. I have not sailed against any of these young guys before and they all know more about their boats than I do. If I can stay with them, I know I will get better, and if I don’t, then I will get very cross and be asking questions.”
Provided “Toxic” and the remainder of his shore crew fulfil their part of the bargain, Knox-Johnston will sail for Bilbao in late September, ready for the start on October 22. Ranged against him will be a fleet of international yachtsmen, including Mike Golding, one of Britain’s most experienced solo sailors Bernard Stamm, a previous winner and the Japanese mountaineer-turned-sailor, Kojiro Shiraishi.
The competition is formidable and with two stopovers in Fremantle, Western Australia and Norfolk, Virginia, the race will be flat out as well as being highly physical. One of Knox-Johnston’s stated aims is to knock 200 days off the time of his last solo circumnavigation. Otherwise, he will not predict any outcome or encourage any misplaced bravado. For the moment, it is enough to be rekindling an old passion, redefining human possibility again. “If I wasn’t doing this, I’d be quietly drifting off into oblivion,” he says.
Even in Suhaili, drifting was never his style.
