Photo: Frances Howorth

What's your earliest memory of travel?
When I was seven my father, a ship’s Captain, took me away to sea on a coastal voyage to European ports and I remember returning to, and locking into London’s Dockland, long before they became trendy places to live. We berthed alongside the wharf prior to disembarking and I can vividly recall then, vowing I would spend my life traveling the world by sea.

What's your most bizarre?
Being dropped over the side of a ship inside a cargo net where I was deposited into a waiting cargo barge and taken ashore through the surf at Takoradi in West Africa.

And your most amusing?
I was airlifted off a ship in order that I might return home. The helicopter pilot told me we would stop at one other ship on our way towards Cape Town. When we landed on it, I was told to get out while ship’s mail and essential supplies where discharged. No one told me that it had completed its task and the wretched thing then left without me, leaving me on board a Danish tanker heading back to the Persian Gulf, the very same spot I had left two weeks earlier.

Everyone gets it wrong sometimes, so what's the biggest travel blunder you've ever made?
On a suburban train in Buenos Aires during 1966, I was stupid enough to deny I was German and proudly admitted to my Argentinean inquisitors that I was in fact, English. Had I known that the defeated Argentina World Cup football team had just returned home from the UK, knocked out of the tournament 1 – 0 to England, I would not have been so patriotic.

Which is the place you haven't been to yet but would most like to visit?
As a sailor I get around the globe a great deal, but mostly get to see the sea, coastlines and cities that have ports. I would love to venture through Africa driving a Land Rover perhaps, or better yet, trek across India slowly on the back of an elephant.

Who, outside of your own family, would you most like to go traveling with and why?
Phileas Fogg and Michael Palin travelling together trying to recreate what they both did in 80 days to see if it can still be done in today’s modern world. I am betting that it cannot be done again.

How did you get involved in travel writing?
I have always enjoyed writing and have done so since I was a teenager, my first work was sold to the Womens Weekly Magazine but I confess they were short stories based on my adventures as a young passenger ship officer. Travel came later in 1993 when Frances and I set off to sail around the world in our own yacht and took with us, a commission to send back regular destination articles for a yachting magazine that we still write for.

Where would you never want to go to again?
Tristan da Cunha, I loved it, honestly I did! but I cannot imagine much has changed since we were last there nearly 20 years ago!

Favourite museum or gallery?
As a boy I loved the Science Museum and I still always try to vist any museums with a connection to the sea.

Most memorable hotel?
It has to be Bylos in St Tropez, of course it helped that we were transferred to their doorstep by private helicopter from the deck of a 60 metre mega yacht all our expenses paid, and the hotel manager assummed we owned the yacht! Reality dawned next day when we trooped off to the port for our next assignment: a charter aboard a sailing boat a mere 15 metres overall!

When and why did you join the Guild?
It was in 2004 and I did so because I was allowed to! At the time I had thought of myself as a yachting journalist who simply wrote about where we were sailing to next. You, my fellow members have taught me that travel is indeed a very wide and all embracing subject.

How has the Guild been most helpful?
The ID Card gets you everywhere when you are working aboard. The new website I think is going to be an even more useful tool.

Which travel destination has taken you most by surprise and why?
I had no idea how interesting the city of Istanbul could be and I had no idea streets could be so crowded late into the evening with people simply being outside walking, talking and sitting in street side cafes.

Three Desert Island Discs for your iPod?
Gordon Giltrap's Heartsong, the BBC TV theme for Holiday; Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve; and Flying, an instrumental tune played by The Beatles.

And three favourite books to pass the journey?
I am assuming I only get three to last forever, so they have to stand the test of time and have re readability. In which case, it has to be any of the Wilbur Smith novels based in Africa, and Nicholas Monsarrat's two-part unfinished work The Master Mariner (which I would love to complete in his memory). And can I take the novel I am writing together with Frances? We really need to finish it soon.