British sailor to mark 50th anniversary of circumnavigation
SAN DIEGO (AP) — In the spring of 1969, three months before the moon landing, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston of Britain achieved the nautical equivalent of climbing Mount Everest when he became the first man to sail alone around the world nonstop.
With GPS still in the future, the merchant seaman made his way around the globe the old-fashioned way, with a sextant. There were several times when his voyage could have ended in disaster. Yet 312 days after he left Falmouth aboard his 32-foot Bermudian ketch, Suhaili, and having spent Christmas and his 30th birthday at sea, he sailed back into the southwestern English port to a hero’s welcome as the winner of the Golden Globe Trophy sponsored by the Sunday Times.
The feat will be commemorated in Falmouth on Monday, the 50th anniversary of the finish.
“I reckon I can celebrate the 50th anniversary but can’t guarantee I’ll be around for 100th,” Knox-Johnston, 80, said in a phone interview. “There will be a heck of a crowd of friends and people turning up . ... The navy said if it’s not doing something else, they’ll give me a warship. I doubt it will be an aircraft carrier. We’ve only got one and it’s in dry dock.”
Knox-Johnston was considered an underdog because he had no sponsorship and little money. Yet he was well-prepared due to a four-year apprenticeship with the merchant navy — which he called “brilliant training for this thing” — and having spent 77 days sailing Suhaili from India to Britain after it was built.
He was the only one of nine entrants to finish the race after surviving some potentially devastating moments, as well as having his radio break and his water supply fouled.
A knockdown in the Roaring Forties about 400 miles south of the Cape of Good Hope damaged the self-steering. Then he got into such big seas that he likened it to an anvil slamming into the hull. He had spent his last money on a coil of two-inch rope, which he put out from the stern to help control the boat.
After his water supply was fouled, he said he had five gallons of fresh water left and 100 cans of beer.
“There’s my liquid,” Knox-Johnston said. “I reckoned with that I can probably get to Australia. I was just south of the Cape of Good Hope, so, well, why not carry on? I’ll see if I can catch rain in the sails, which is what I did from then on. It went very well.”
Halfway between New Zealand and Cape Horn, he was on the deck when a huge wave came from astern and broke over the boat. Realizing he’d be washed overboard if he stayed on deck, he went up the rigging and watched the boat disappear under the wave. The wave had opened the hatch and filled the boat with what he estimated as three tons of water.
“The best bailer is a frightened man with a bucket,” he said.
Out of contact with civilization for four months, he sailed near the Melbourne pilot vessel and asked if he could toss over some mail and photographs. He said he was met with a rude response.
When he told them he was then heading across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand, the response was: “You be careful, mate. The Tasman’s bloody dangerous,” Knox-Johnston recalled. “He wasn’t the least bit impressed with the fact I’d sailed 147 days from England.”