David Clarke...

Businessman and adventurer David Clarke from Cheshire (United Kingdom) has already sailed across the Atlantic following the famous Christopher Columbus route. David is now planning and preparing to repeat this journey by rowing in a lightweight and compact boat currently being built by the highly skilled boat builder Jamie Fabrizio.

Working in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire for the last 10 years has kept David extremely busy. However, over the last few years he has managed to write a book on his epic sail. Reliving the experience in words writing "An Ocean Away" fuelled David’s idea of the double and to be the first to sail and row the Columbus route solo.

In a small boat and unsupported…an even greater challenge!

Follow David's training programme....

The Double...

The idea of the double came when David was reliving his previous sailing experience writing his book -"An Ocean Away".

Although these days solo Atlantic sailing is not that unusual, there are still not many to have sailed the Atlantic solo in an engineless boat at just over 5 metres in length. When David completed the Journey in 1995, there had been even less.

David says "I have the first edition of John Fairfax's book Britannia: Rowing alone across the Atlantic. I've owned the book for nearly 30 years and I guess at the back of my mind I have always harboured dreamlike thoughts of rowing an Ocean. And that's what they were just fanciful dreams planted there in an impressionable teenager all those years ago."

But now these dreams have been rekindled for a reason and that reason - to be the first person to both row and sail the great Atlantic on the Christopher Columbus trade- wind route.

This double attempt will be a first, especially in small boats!