When the email first landed in my inbox to pitch for an interview, Sir Robin’s press officer described her client as a ‘madman and a gentleman’ – a description that feels just right. His list of achievements is almost incomparable to all but the most famous of adventurers, and that he’s still relatively unknown to the wider public is testament to his love of sailing and dislike of being a celebrity for celebrity’s sake. He’s circumnavigated the world four times, once as the first to make the crossing non-stop in 1968 and another setting the then world-record time alongside Sir Peter Blake in 1994;  been named UK Yachtsman of the year four times; and created the Clipper Round The World Yacht race, giving amateurs the opportunity to experience one of the toughest feats in sailing. For fun, he’s also been ice trekking in the deep frozen Frobisher Bay in the far north of Canada with Sir Ranulph Fiennes and gone mountain climbing with Sir Chris Bonington, a man who summited Mount Everest at the age of 50.

 

In person, the man the French call ‘The Don’ is everything you’d hope him to be: candid, funny, bloody-minded. He’s refreshingly unmedia trained, too, and sports a fabulously dry sense of humour. In fact, perhaps the only thing he loves more than the sea is cigarettes and whisky (‘My doctor once asked me why I smoked and I just said, “Because I enjoy it,” he quips). His bullshit radar is, as you can image, second to none, while his achievements were driven, he explains, as much by a desire to push himself to the limit as a huge ‘fuck you’ to all those that doubted him. Before he set sail on that famous first round the world voyage, for instance, he was told by a passer-by that it was impossible to finish. He snapped back: ‘I hope you’re not a teacher, because you would be bloody depressing for the kids.’

 

Yet the stranger had something of a point, too: circumnavigating the globe singlehandedly and without stopping really was considered impossible by much of the world before he set sail nearly half a century ago. Even Sir Francis Chichester, the first to travel solo around the world, begrudgingly accepted he would have to stop off for supplies in Sydney, at the halfway point of his journey.

 

Setting out from Falmouth on 14th June 1968, the trip that made Sir Robin’s name took 313 days and covered 30,123 miles. He was one of nine men drafted in to attempt the record, as part of The Sunday Times Golden Globe race, yet was the only one to finish, as one by one his competitors either quit, sank, or, in one sad instance, committed suicide. He did it all without the kind of modern satellite communications we consider standard today, with just a barometer, radio and look of the sky to guide him around. It was a trip filled with terrifying anecdotes, from diving into shark invested seas to repair a leaking hull to having battery acid splashed in his eye and surviving 90ft waves. That he did it in his sluggish 32ft wooden ketch Suhaili, which he refurbished and made seaworthy himself, adds to the legend surrounding the journey.

 

‘I was always asked by journalists how I coped on my own during that year,’ he explains, now sat inside sipping a coffee. ‘I always just said I had no idea. When you’re out there you’re so focussed you don’t notice. Of course, every couple of months you have a bad day and you think, “I just can’t stand anymore of this.” But then I think of the me who got me to that point, and not wanting to let that person down just because I was having a bad day.’

 

‘But the great thing is that because it’s not actually a world record it can’t be broken. I will always be the first.’

 

He puts his success down to his background in the Merchant Navy. After signing up in 1957, he was based aboard Chindwara, a 7,500 tonne cargo ship, which was crewed almost entirely by a team of 40 cadets. Here he learned the basics: knots, splices, canvas work, rigging, even how to paint the vessel. He served three years there, running between London and East Africa, before ending up living in Bombay with his late wife Suzanne. It’s here that he bought Suhaili.

 

‘I had my boat in India and I was sailing it home. I was halfway to Cape Town when I heard about Sir Francis Chichester. I thought, “That’s it. That’s the one thing left to do: sail around the world but without stopping.”’

 

His love of the sea, though, starts from as far back as he can remember. Born on 17th March 1939, in Putney, London as the eldest of four brothers, he learned to read when he was seven and began to devour C S Forester’s Hornblower books, which chartered the adventures of a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic Wars. By 12, he’d read all 11 novels. ‘At Christmas I got books about the sea as presents and from then on going out there was my life,’ he says. ‘By 10 the decision was made. Going to sea is all I have ever wanted to do.’