Douglas Robertson

And I did tell him many years later when I met him that it was your fault that we sailed around the world.

Because he was on the news, on the radio, and Dougal, my dad, began to explain to us what it was like to be at sea and to be sailing and to be sailing a yacht and how tough it would be, a single-handed sailboat.

how they would manage to do that and how they got around the world, you know, how they navigated to get around the world.

So we followed them on the radio.

We followed their progress on the radio until eventually Robin Knox-Johnson won.

And it crossed the finish line.

It was all adventure to us.

We thought it was great, you know, these sort of dynamics going on.

And it was my brother Neil who said, Daddy, you're a sailor.

Why don't we sail around the world?

Now, kids should be careful about what they say, you know.

I think they say out of the mouths of babies and sucklings.

Somehow that sparked the idea in Dougal's head.

And talk switched from the yacht race regularly, because the yacht race was now over, to a possible...

trip of our own around the world, you know.

And talk became of little else than us sailing around the world.

The more we talked about it, the less fantasy and the more sort of planning it got, you know.

And what's the point of having a plan if you're not going to actually do something?

You know, before we knew it, we were selling a farm, looking at yachts, and planning this trip around the world.

I always remember my godfather and godmother who were our neighbors.