Captain Bob

On my third Atlantic Crossing (I don't keep count) a unique experience happened. I had been crewing a Colin Archer designed wooden ketch, we had set off from Corsica and passed through Gibraltar and Villamoura and had arrived in Tenerife on a Sunday morning, the day after England lost to Australia in the 1991 Rugby World Cup Final. We had done an oil change and were asked to move our berth to accommodate a motor yacht that was shortly to arrive. This was no problem, we needed to move to refuel. When we returned we moored astern of a large motor yacht named Lady Ghislaine. I recognised the name and wandered along the quay to take a look. The windows were all boarded up for an Atlantic crossing, a door opened and out popped the owner, Robert Maxwell. He had been under investigation for some financial irregularities at Mirror Group newspapers. We nodded at each other, he looked tired but really no different to his usual haggard look. We left Tenerife later that afternoon bound for Cap Verde and switched on the World Service at 0800 the next morning to hear that his body had been retrieved from the sea near to Tenerife. I maintain that I was probably the last independent person to see him alive, spooky.

This is the yacht I was on, Batian