Adventure sailor Adrian Flanagan has just completed a boyhood dream to circumnavigate the Globe - vertically through the icebound North East Passage!

His efforts aboard the 38ft stainless steel sloop ‘Barrabas’, is not recognised as a record by the World Sailing Speed Record Council because he was forced to break the voyage twice along the way, but there is no doubt that this was a voyage of epic proportions.

After leaving the Hamble River in 2005, the British yachtsman's trials and tribulations began when he was washed overboard, only days after setting off. Having not attached a safety line, Adrian feared the worst, thinking "with absolute certainty" that all was lost, only to be washed back on deck again by another wave!

Further ahead, he encountered pirates off the coast of Brazil, who tracked him for two days “I armed my weapon. I had a pump-action shotgun on board specifically for that purpose. I stayed awake for 48 hours.”

His next challenge was to round Cape Horn west against the prevailing winds and currents, dislocating both of his wrists whilst navigating the heavy weather, in the process becoming only the 14th sailor to do so, before heading northwards up the Pacific Ocean to the Bearing Sea.

He reached the Russian Arctic in July 2007, and was then stopped by Russian military bureaucracy from traversing the 2000 mile Northern Sea Route and NW passage. It was only the intervention of Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich that got Flanagan the permission he needed to continue and he was escorted through the impenetrable ice by a Russian icebreaker convoy. “That was the crowning achievement of the voyage, not just for me but for everyone involved." Flanagan said at the finish last week.

After another stop, wintering in Norway, during which he returned home, Flanagan resumed his voyage earlier this year and returned to the Royal Southern Yacht Club on the Hamble on 21 May after a remarkable 405 days on the water. He advised all other adventurers “To live but not to dream is pointless, but to dream and not to live it is worse.”

‘Barabbas’ is now up for sale for £130,000 as Adrian looks to fill the large financial hole that the trip has left.

Speaking a week after arriving back on shore, Adrian said that his immediate plans are to finish the ‘Over the Top’ manuscript and to promote the expedition at the upcoming London and Southampton Boat shows. Further on from that, he aims to teach his two sons, aged 6 and 9 to sail. He also hopes to attempt a Transatlantic crossing with his eldest son Ben in a couple of years.

Regardless of whether he gets his name in the record books, Adrian has undoubtedly realised a boyhood dream and shown that ambitions can be achieved, “Whatever else I do, I will always have this, others have sailed parts of it, but I am the first to put them together in one route, it is unique.”

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