robin knox—johnston was an experienced merchant seamen, he'd spent eight years working for the british india companyping routes around india, east and south africa. but in 1967, something happened that would change his life. sir francis chichester he had completed his voyage around the world! he has a proud place in the history of maritime! he stopped once in australia but it was an incredible voyage and i think anyone vaguely interested realised that there's one thing to be done and that was go nonstop and the idea sort of fixed on me really. and i got some drawings made up of a much bigger boat because a bigger boat goes faster but i could not get any money so eventually i took the boat i got. and where did the name come from? well suhail is a star, one of the navigation stars and its roughly sort of northwest and the wind in the persian gulf where i have been working for four or five years they named this particular wind the suhaili and i thought well, actually that's the direction of england. my wife's name is sue, so it seemed a tactful thing to do. so what came first? your desire to sail nonst