The countdown begins, 2 years to go…
In a little under 2 year’s time, Ian will have started The 2022 Golden Globe Race, 54 years after the legendary journey was completed by Sir Robin Knox-Johnston.
Sir Robin completed a nonstop single-handed circumnavigation of the globe in 1969, sailing a 32ft yacht; the journey took 312 days. He recently spoke to the Guardian newspaper regarding the journey.
Just ten weeks into the voyage, Knox-Johnston’s radio broke down. “It was very frustrating,” he says.
“I could hear people calling me, but I couldn’t respond.” For four and a half months, nothing was heard of him. The Times prepared an obituary.
How did he keep himself together mentally? “That worried me,” he admits.
“I took to learning poetry. I had a lovely anthology by Field Marshal Wavell called Other Men’s Flowers. I committed all these wonderful poems to memory. I’d sit there steering while reciting to myself.
“I tried to keep to a regular schedule. Sleep during the night, although obviously at times you couldn’t because you had to be on deck. I’d make myself dinner, check everything was all right, then go and have some sleep, wake three or four hours later, check things, go back to bed again. Then, as the sun rose, I’d get up, have a cup of coffee, make breakfast, check the boat and take my sights to work out where I was.”
Food was fairly basic, but he had taken 12 bottles of whisky, 12 of brandy and 120 cans of beer, and he enjoyed a whisky or brandy with a cigarette before dinner.
Did he ever get drunk? “You’re on your own,” he says emphatically. “That would be pretty stupid.”
Did he miss company? “Oh God, yes,” he says, just as emphatically. “Going past Australia with my receiver working and picking up dance music on a Saturday night.
You thought: ‘What the hell am I doing out here on my own?’ But then you think: ‘I’m still in this. I’m not giving this up for anything.’” And sex? “You have to put it out of your mind,” he says.
“You need all your energy for the boat.”
The next edition of the Golden Globe Race will start from Les Sables d’Olonne, France on 4 September 2022. Click here to find out more.