After 327 days completely alone at sea, British adventurer Dave “Dinger” Bell has finally landed in Kenya.
The 54-year-old former Royal Marine arrived in Kilifi on Friday,ending an astonishing solo and unsupported row that began on the west coast of Peru on November 9, 2025.
He left Lima in his carbon fibre boat named Billy No Mates and never touched land again.
By the time he reached the Kenyan coast, he had covered more than 15,000 nautical miles about 28,000 kilometres across the Pacific and Indian oceans.
His route took him through the Coral Sea, the Great Barrier Reef, the treacherous Torres Strait and along Australia’s northern coast before crossing into the Indian Ocean.
It was not smooth water.Bell was forced to pause for nearly eight weeks in the South Pacific to avoid cyclone season, survived a knockdown in the Coral Sea that flooded his cabin and damaged electrics, battled salt sores, and was followed for weeks by white tip sharks.
To beat isolation, he listened to podcasts, audiobooks and voice notes from home.
Locals in Kilifi welcomed him as a real life Robinson Crusoe completing what experts call one of the greatest human powered ocean crossings ever attempted.
