She was built between 1963-1965 by the British Merchant Marine Officer Robin Knox-Johnson at the Colaba Workshop Ltd., Bombay, India.
Named SUHAILI, an Arabic name for the southeast wind.
Tonnage 14 tons, dim. 9.8 x 3.4 x 1.5m.
Ketch rigged. Hull teak wood.
Crew 1 – 5.
When Knox-Johnson was stationed in India with the British Steam Navigation Company, he was called home, to work on the companies service from England to Africa, he sailed her with the help of his brother and a friend, around South Africa, a 12.000 mile passage, to the U.K.
After his arrival he heard rumors that the Frenchman Eric Tabarly planned a nonstop solo circumnavigation, he was determined that an Englishman would be the first, and he fitted his yacht out for the same voyage.
The Sunday Times, the English newspaper in the meantime put up the Golden Globe award for the first person to circumnavigated the world solo.
Between the first of June 1968 and 31 October 6 yacht set sail, the SUHAILI was the third yacht to set sail on 14 June 1968 from Falmouth. She followed the clipper route, during bad weather near Cape of Good Hope her radio equipment broke down and the rest of the voyage mostly was without radio communication.
When she passed Bass Strait between Australia and Tasmania, she damaged her tiller, self steering gear and water tanks in bad weather. Then she headed for New Zealand passing through the Foveaux Strait between New Zealand, South Island and Steward Island, were he grounded on a sandbank near Dunedin, but he got off.
He radioed thereafter his sponsors, the Sunday Mirror and True Magazine:
I am beginning to wonder how much of the original boat is going to be left with by the time I reach home. So far I have written off the self-steering gear, two tillers, a jib, a spinnaker, half the cooking stove and the water tanks. The cabin has shifted and is leaking, and its canvas cover is creaking.
That message was the last his sponsors received for the next 134 days when she sailed in the Roaring Forties for Cape Horn, which she rounded on 17 January 1969. After passing of the south point of South America she set course for Europe. At least on 5 April she was seen by a British tanker who spoke with him in a position of about 500 miles west of the Azores. 13 Days later she was off the South Coast of England but adverse wind kept her the next four days off the coast, before on 22 April after a voyage of 313 days and a distance of 30.123 miles she entered Falmouth.
All his opponents in the race did not finish, and Robin Knox-Johnson won the Golden Globe award.
After repair Knox-Johnson used her for family outings around the U.K. and Europe, and she was used for a sailing/climbing expedition to Greenland, when he took 4 climbers and photographers to attempt the Cathedral Mountain.
From 1998 she was on display at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.
2001 Returned to Falmouth for a refit on the Pendennis Shipyard, and she will be made ready for sea again.
Grenada 2002 $6 sg?, scott?
Source: Ships of the World by Lincoln P. Paine. http://www.madforsailing.com.