Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1990, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My cast away this week is a sailor. 22 years ago he put to see in a race he was not considered likely to win.

Ten months later he returned to a hero's welcome, the only man to finish the course,

and the first one to sail single-handed non-stop around the world. Since then he's spent

much of his time at sea, a firm believer that ports, rot ships and men he's captured many

others sailing firsts, including recently a voyage using only the navigational instruments of 500 years ago.

It took not only the courage of an adventurer, but the skill of a master mariner too. He is Robin Knox Johnston.

Now Robin you are of course an ideal castaway, not least because you've bumped into a few desert islands in your time.

Where are the best ones would you say?

Well the softest ones to bump into.

The best I've seen are probably off the coast of Tanzania because they look like tropical islands.

They've got lovely white sandy beaches and palm trees and all the other nice things about them.

I'm a bit worried about those ones though because they are a bit overrun by flies that bite.

So can I please choose a different island to those?

But do you think there is such a thing as the perfect one?

Have you ever landed on one and thought this is it, this is paradise?

Yes, I mean there's places in Scotland I've landed on,

I thought this is paradise.

There's other ones off Africa I found

which I thought was lovely in India you find some beautiful but you see I've

never spent very long in the Pacific I mean I've still yet to explore that so I'm

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