Barry Perrins: ‘I bought the boat and lived the dream’

Laura Hodgetts

After nine years of circumnavigating the globe, 'old Seadog' Barry Perrins talks to Laura Hodgetts about seamanship, the realities of sailing offshore and his onboard essentials

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As Barry Perrins notes, sailing around the world solo isn’t just a seamanship test; “you have to do everything by yourself, be your own doctor, psychiatrist, accountant, and so on. I’ve done minor surgery on myself.”

Showing the bad as well as the good of one man’s quest to live his dream has been the appeal of Barry Perrins on social media, helping him to gather 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. Barry 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.’”

A yacht sailing

The 36ft steel-hulled Van de Stadt, White Shadow has been Barry’s home for a decade: “She’s slow, but feels bulletproof”. Credit: @adventuresofaseadog

Before setting sail in June 2016 on a 30,000-mile voyage aboard his 36ft steel Van de Stadt sloop White Shadow, Barry Perrins “used to be one of those people who say they’ll do something, then didn’t do it. I decided not to do that anymore.” Instead, the former carpenter and lifeboat volunteer press officer kept plans to go ‘all the way around’ quiet. “I’ll keep going and see where I end up,” was his motto.

“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.”

After a stop in Portugal, reaching Cape Verde island, south of the Canary Islands, committed him to sailing transatlantic. Seeing Barbados was a “big, big win” among his voyage highlights, “because that meant I’d actually crossed the Atlantic, like ‘Wow, that’s the Caribbean.’”

Another key moment was going through the Panama Canal. Shortly after leaving Panama, Perrins was becalmed in the Pacific Ocean and reported missing until a French rescue aircraft spotted him and updated Falmouth Coastguard. Perrins reappeared on Hiva Oa, French Polynesia, 71 days later. It was in the French Marquesas that Perrins swam with manta rays, an experience so moving he got a manta ray tattoo: “They were circling my boat so I jumped in and swam with these manta rays, it was awesome.”

a man relaxing in a dinghy

A ‘dinghy swim’ to stay cool in Australia. Credit: @adventuresofaseadog

Reaching New Zealand marked the halfway point and was “somewhere I’d always wanted to go”, said Perrins, who was in Whangarei when the Covid 19 pandemic struck. He loved his 18 months there: “We started a band. I’ve got a single out, the song’s called Halfway.

During Covid, New Zealand was open to itself, so it was a really good place to be. I flew to the South Island, to Queenstown, and I had the place to myself. It looked like the West Country of Cornwall and Devon on steroids – awesome. Milford Sound is so gobsmackingly beautiful, you just cry.’

Barry Perrins on offshore realities

Barry Perrins had owned a smaller yacht and another 36ft yacht previously and sailed both solo around the coast, but described offshore stuff as “big boys’ sailing, or big people sailing… you have to learn a lot.” The opportunity arose when Perrins inherited his father’s house in Yorkshire. “I sold the house and thought ‘I could be a stupid boy and buy a really expensive car, or holidays, but it was my inheritance from my father, so I should spend wisely, so I bought the boat and lived the dream.”

The Van de Stadt, his home for a decade, has served him well: “It’s a slow boat because it’s steel but very safe, I like that it’s kind of bulletproof.” There were some storms and rough seas where Perrins thought: “If I don’t make the right decision now, I could kill myself, or the mast could come down or something. And you have this feeling of dread in the pit of your stomach because you’re a long way from anywhere, so if it gets really bad there’s no one to help. I had to accept that I may die.”

Barry Perrins

Barry Perrins told no one about his plans to sail around the world. Credit: @adventuresofaseadog

He said: “I had bad weather in the Pacific. The Atlantic was good for me, going down, but the Tasman Sea was rough. In every sea that I sailed, there’s been some blooming awful weather and I’ve been scared, but then the sun comes out, and you try to forget it.”

When Covid restrictions eased, Perrins sailed to Australia and saw crocodiles in the Northern Territory. He said: “At the Great Barrier Reef, I had to anchor every night because I’m by myself, I can’t travel at night in those reefs. I’d get the binoculars out and look to see if it’s okay to take a can of beer ashore and watch the sunset, and many a time you see a log, then look closely and it has teeth at one end and tail at the other. Big, big fellas.”

Off the Australian coast, the former volunteer RNLI crew required lifeboat assistance himself. He said: “Sleep deprivation is used as torture. But for a long-distance sailor, that’s just a hazard that happens.

You can go for days without sleep, or very little sleep. And of course, your decision-making becomes befuddled. Off Bundaberg, I also ran out of sea room and the engine was broken.

I couldn’t sail because it was so, so windy. There were big seas and I was drifting towards land. I was managing, sort of, but in contact with the coastguard. He said, ‘should we come and get you?’ and I said, ‘Oh yes, please!’”

Perrins’ voyage continued via Indonesia, South Africa, back to the Caribbean, transatlantic to the Azores, then the UK.

Barry Perrins on Cruising Life

Barry Perrins praised the amazing cruising community, “whichever port, harbour or marina you pop into, there’s usually people there to take your lines and they’ll fill you in on what’s what, how to get your visa done, and the paperwork required.” He never felt threatened during his trip, although said: “You have to have that sixth sense when you feel maybe I won’t go out here at night. You’ve got to be sensible. I once had, through my [YouTube] channel, some guy said ‘hey Barry I can fix you up with a good shotgun and a hand gun.’ I said ‘Mate I don’t need that stuff.’ The normal people in the world when you take away politics and religion are basically good people, just trying to look after their families and get by as best they can.”

Aside from friends visiting in Panama, Perrins sailed the circumnavigation alone. He said: “I had offers, occasionally, from people who wanted to come along, but I thought I’ve got this far doing it solo. I want to have that single-handed crown. “Also, it’s very difficult with personalities on a boat because you’re in an enclosed space, and I hear so many horrible stories about people getting stuck with each other, and it becomes unpleasant. I’ve had a hard enough time dealing with myself.”

A man and a woman greeting each other on a boat pontoon

Barry with sister Tina – who has kindly been storing all of his possessions. Credit: @adventuresofaseadog

The 68-year-old has become a role model for all ages. He said: “When people see I’m 68, they think ‘it’s all doable’. I’ve come back a lot fitter than when I left, apart from my leg.” A key reason for Perrins’ return is for him and ‘Shaddy’ his yacht to be patched up.

“This circumnavigation has knocked seven barrels of crap out of us both. I got cellulitis in Australia, a bacterial infection, which is quite serious.

It’s probably from a dirty boatyard; it was hot, you sweat, scratch a mosquito bite, and the bacteria gets in. It’s virulent and has destroyed the lymph glands in my leg.

You don’t recover from it, you just manage it. I’m all right, I just limp about when I get sore, and I don’t stand at the bar anymore. And Shaddy needs a lot of work too.”

He added: “Also, I’m two years into my pension and I don’t have it yet.” The home stretch between France and England was gruelling when Perrins got “stopped for nearly a week in rough seas where there was no wind, then there was too much wind, blowing the wrong way out of the Channel. It took me ages to do the last bit.”

A yacht moored up alongside a pontoon

Best of all? The welcome home. Credit: @adventuresofaseadog

Just outside Plymouth, Perrins was delighted by dolphins dancing around the boat, then a welcome home flotilla, organised by ex-coxswain David Milford, that topped all the voyage highlights: “The RNLI came out, they had all the water jets on, there were boats all around me, the horns going off. Brilliant.”

Alongside boat work, Perrins will be writing a book, releasing more music and continuing to edit his voyage videos. Once he and Shaddy are patched up, he hopes to set sail again next spring: “I’ve got plans to do a tour of the UK, then Ireland and the Channel Islands, but I’ll be with crew. No more sad, lonely man.”

Barry Perrins’s Onboard Essentials

Sailor Barry Perrins wearing a hat and sunglasses on his boat

The Hydrovane was Barry’s best piece of kit. Credit: @adventuresofaseadog

Gear

■ Hydrovane wind vane steering system is the piece of kit. I don’t have electric steering, so it made a huge difference.

■ Navionics – I got the Automatic Identification System (AIS) to sit on the Navionics so you could see ships and things going at the same time. That worked very well, all the way around. I had it on my phone as well so I could lie in my bunk, nap but still monitor myself.

■ AIS alarm – on my phone so it was right by my head so I would wake up.

■ Starlink satellite communications – for the last few months, when I was mostly at sea but wanted to put videos out and stay in touch. It’s a game changer – the beginning of a massive revolution in connectivity and a great safety aid, I can get the weather etc.

■ Iridium GO! PredictWind – I did not find either easy to use. I could never get email to work, and I sometimes struggled with the satellite phone. You have to programme it; I just want to plug and play.

Now I’ve got Starlink, I’ve cancelled Iridium GO!, but I did use PredictWind – I had a tracker link that worked well and I wrote a log daily.

■ Media output – I use an Apple iPad, MacBook and iPhone

■ Windy – when I’m on the satellites, the Windy forecast is pretty good.

■ A fridge – was used daily until it broke down mid-Atlantic on the way back, then I had to restructure how I ate everything. For example, milk for coffee became powdered milk; for fruit juice, I had to buy those little cartons because otherwise it would just spoil.

Food

Beans and bread on a plate

Barry recommends bread in a pan with curry powder – and sprouting Mung beans. Credit: @adventuresofaseadog

■ I was baking my own bread. I make it in a pan and use curry powder or spices to flavour it, so the bread itself becomes a meal, and you can have that on its own with mayonnaise.

■ For fresh food, because the fresh stuff runs out quickly, I’ve got mung beans. You store them dry so they’re easy to stow, then just put them on a wet piece of kitchen paper in a Tupperware box, and they sprout within two days. And you just shove those in your mouth. It’s fresh greens.

■ Eggs were great – but in a lot of places, I had to keep throwing them overboard. Some of the islands, like St Helena, the food comes frozen on ships, so they thaw it out, put it in the supermarket; you think it’s fresh, but after a few days, it rots.

■ Cans of whatever you can get. Before my fridge broke down, I’d put a can of peaches in the fridge, open that up on a hot day, gulp those down, and the syrup is full of energy.

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