BARRY PERRINS: 'I bought the boat and lived the dream'

After nine years of circumnavigating the globe, the 'old Seadog' tells Laura Hodgetts he's home to get patched up and a pension

- BARRY PERRINS

Sailing around the world solo isn't just a seamanship test; Showing the bad as well as the good of one man's quest to live his dream has been Barry Perrins' appeal on social media, gathering 130,000 subscribers on his Adventures of an old Seadog YouTube channel, 31,000-plus followers on Facebook and 8,600 more on Instagram.

In the case of the minor surgery, Perrins, a former lifeboat crew from Plymouth who travelled with an extensive medical kit, removed a toenail after the anchor hatch slammed on his foot while at anchor at Rodrigues Island, in the Indian Ocean. Perrins said: “I nearly lost a toe. They got me to hospital and said, ‘We can do this and do that’. I looked around, the conditions weren't particularly savoury, so I said, 'I'll do it myself. It's okay.”

Prior to setting sail in June 2016 on a 30,000-mile voyage aboard his 36ft steel Van de Stadt sloop White Shadow, Perrins Instead, the former carpenter and lifeboat volunteer press officer kept plans to go 'all the way around' quiet. Perrins said: “It’s such a huge thing when you face the reality of the situation, so I thought I'll do it one step at a time.”