Meet the 84-year-old man sailed around the world in a garden shed
Most 84-year-olds probably would prefer to take a cruise rather than set sail in a rickety old shed.
But not Anthony Smith.
Mr Smith built a raft with telegraph poles and plastic pipes and set off around the world at 2 knots for two months. He named the 40ft by 18ft craft the Antiki.
Mr Smith did not sail alone, he recruited three other crew members Dave Hildred, 57, Andy Bainbridge, 56, and GP John Russell, 61.
In total the group of four would travel 3,500 miles – 50 miles a day – across the Atlantic in the Antiki from the Canary Island to Eleuthera in the Bahamas.
The 640sq ft boat had two toilets, three bunks, a GPS and radio powered by four solar panels.
The trip was a lonely and dangerous one. Time was spent rating the quality of sunsets and living on a diet of potatoes, pasta, rice and soya.
Drinking water was stored in 14 pipes that also made up the structure of the vessel.
Mr Smith, who wrote a book The Old Man And The Sea: A True Story of Crossing The Atlantic By Raft about the adventure, had already survived many other adventures including:motor-cycling the length of Africa, canoeing down 2,000 miles of an Amazonian river and becoming the first Briton to fly a balloon across the Alps.
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