Ben Lowings has sailed dinghies and yachts everywhere from the Norwegian Arctic to New Zealand. An ex-newsreader for Radio New Zealand, he has spent more than a decade at the BBC World Service.

He also skippers commercial yacht deliveries around Britain. He has written three books, The Chancellor, a biography of the yachtsman George Millar, and The Dolphin, a biography of Dr David Lewis, and The Sun Of May: Vito Dumas: A Life.