Great British Odyssey

A full on cowboy experience,” says world record holder Angus Collins of his 71 day Indian Ocean voyage, his first of four ocean rows. “I wouldn’t advise anyone start with the Indian Ocean. A few of us did the Indian Ocean first: none of us did it again.” The 35-year-old adventure consultant holds records for his Pacific and (two) Atlantic crossings, but his next challenge is closer to home.

Photo Ocean rower Angus Collins

Credit David Loftus

The Great British Odyssey, the name of his latest challenge, will be Collins’ first ever solo row. He is aiming to complete a single-handed circumnavigation around mainland Great Britain – non-stop and unsupported. If successful, Collins will be the first person to do it.

The campaign has already proved challenging. The boat remains unfinished and his original schedule has lapsed; by this point (four weeks out) Collins had hoped to complete several test rows. Such worries are not on show as he springs across the gravel drive to greet me at his beautiful country home in Hampshire.

“Circumnavigating Great Britain is far harder than crossing the Atlantic. Generally if you put an unmanned boat on the water in the Canaries, it will end up on a Caribbean Island in about 120 days. I had a client who took 125 days, they literally slowed the boat down!

“Around Britain the wind will change direction the whole time and knowing the tides and the intricacies of the local waters is huge. Tidal charts only show you so much, there are always back eddies that only the locals know about. I’ve been talking to the fishermen, sailors, windsurfers, and anyone else who’s been hanging around these areas, to try and work out the local waters.”

There have been eight previous attempts, says Collins. Andrew Hodgson holds the current circumnavigation record; it took him 175 days. “Andy is a good friend of mine. He only rowed when the wind was absolutely perfect. He put enough food in the boat to have a good summer. He knows every inch of the British coastline, so he’ll be my back up if anything goes wrong.”

“That night I intended to take my own life. Luckily I smoked one last joint and passed out.”

Angus Collins

Hodgson stopped in Grimsby for a resupply of food so his row was not unsupported.

“If I run out of food, it’s fishing or I get off, and I’m no good at fishing,” quips Collins, whose launch is uncertain since the postponement of the original date on Sunday 1 June 2025.

“I’ve loved it,” he says of the preparation, “and then I fall off a cliff. A couple of weeks ago I wanted to burn the boat: I was like, I’m done with this! It’s fair to say I’ve been yo-yoing.”

Fundraising has been difficult. The purse strings of his former American sponsors remain drawn. “When I said I’m rowing around Great Britain they were like, what that tiny island in Europe? No.” Collins admits it’s been a slog. “I thought I had a title sponsor, but they pulled out at the last minute. The boat had to go on the back burner: lets go and find the money.”

Even before setting off, the choice to row solo has added to his workload. “Normally I’m part of a four-man team, so the stuff I don’t like to do I pass on to someone else. Now I can’t just do the boat stuff. It’s that, plus finding the money, procuring the equipment, talking to the suppliers, planning it, building it, and shouting about it on social media. And I hate social media: I’m allergic to it!

“I’ve hit that stage where – even though I’m not physically 100% where I need to be, and the boat definitely isn’t ready to launch – I’m desperate to get rowing. All I want to do is get on the water and escape.

“Part of me wants to make the biggest, loudest noise when we leave, but there’s another part that wants to slip the boat on the water at two o’clock in the morning – sack off any press, no friends, no family – just get on my boat and go.”

The Boat

In a wooden barn beside the house, Collins’ purpose-built, partially kitted out boat takes centre stage. He gives me a tour of the six-metre-long craft, which he says cost £130,000 to build and has a dry weight of just 89kg. If all goes to plan it will be his home for 60 days. The sleek shell is not quite a blank canvas, but for now the perfect “fit” resides only in his imagination.

Details pour fourth as he points to various nondescript sections of carbon fibre. “We want to put the weight as far back as possible,” he says. The water-maker and batteries, some of the heaviest bits of kit, are strategically placed centrally and in the lowest section of the hull. “The electrics are all over the place at the moment.”

Typically the bow of an ocean rowing boat is larger than this, says Collins. “Which is great if the wind is coming from behind because it’ll help propel you, but a big bow cabin will stop your progress in a headwind, anything over seven knots and you can’t move forward.”

“If the wind comes past 45° from the back, it’ll crab sideways,” he says of other ocean rowing boats. “This skeg at the back should give me grip and stop me sliding, and the bottom of the boat is as flat as possible so it should be good at surfing.” Collins’ boat is so light that a strong direct crosswind could still be a problem. “I can fill these up with water and steady the boat,” he says, pointing to the compartments beneath the sliding seat, “it will make the boat heavy but I should be able to get more purchase.”

The retractable anchor is another point of difference. “Normally you’d pull the anchor out with the wet chain, wet rope, and tie it all up, and reverse the process when you deploy it. Doing that four times a day – it’s sleep or rowing that you’re missing out on.” Collins tentatively demonstrates releasing the anchor from the deck. “It all works on paper.”

“North Cornwall and a lot of Scotland will completely dry out when I anchor, so I need to be able to lift the anchor up in case I beach it. My daggerboard can act as a backup rudder. At the moment I’m figuring out how many back ups I need.”

Collins has saved weight with his safety raft. “The Atlantic boats have a big 30kg life raft, mine is basically an inflatable rubber ring which should keep me afloat for a couple of hours, if needed, hopefully until the coastguard arrives.”

The stern houses a claustrophobic sleeping area, which even the most ebullient of estate agents would struggle to call cosy. “It’s 6’2″ long,” says Collins. He is already trying to sell the boat. “I’ve shot myself in the foot because there’s a 6’5″ Scot who approached me. I could chop the back off the boat and stick a bucket on the end for his feet, or maybe he could sleep in the foetal position!”

As it stands, one glaring omission is the boat’s lack of riggers. “They were meant to be here already,” says Collins, who seems to visibly deflate before my eyes. “I was told they were ready; two weeks later the company called to say they hadn’t started! They wanted another eight weeks.” Collins switched suppliers. “Until I’ve got the riggers I’m reluctant to put my oars together.” A disassembled pair of blades lie, forlorn, beneath a desk strewn with various wires, coffee cups, paperwork, tools and rowing gear.

A work in progress: the pre-endurance-event endurance event.

The Route

Collins will row clockwise, starting and finishing in Portsmouth. The prevailing wind for the early legs will be a headwind. “The idea is that when I’m my fittest and healthiest I should be able to punch through to Cornwall, and around to Wales.”

From Wales he will hop across the Irish Sea to Ireland. “Between Dublin and Belfast there’s very little tide, so I’m hoping to go as hard as possible and do that in a oner. It is very tidal between Northern Ireland and Scotland so getting across there will be difficult: you have to time it perfectly.”

The north-western section of the route holds the most appeal for Collins. “It can be slow but I love it.” The Scottish coastline is arguably the most dangerous: Collins will pass Europe’s largest whirlpool, as he navigates the notorious Gulf of Corryvreckan.

“It’s the scariest part, but also the most beautiful. There are lots of fishing lanes and lobster pots, and huge tides ripping in between all the Scottish islands. I’ve done it a few times – if you’re switched on it should be ok. Going over the top is gnarly.”

After ‘summitting’ Great Britain it’ll be a race south to Suffolk. “It should be fast and protected from the winds, but emotionally it is dull. There’s Hartlepool and Whitby but that’s about it, mostly just long stretches of nothingness. I’m worried about how the noggin does in that part, motivating myself in that final chapter. Scotland I could do forever, it motivates me, but that East Coast there’s nothing to look at.”

How have the others fared? “Either you see people pick up in that second half because they’ve got fitter, learnt their boat, and got their nutrition dialled in, or it’s the opposite – broken after doing the hard part and getting over the top. The failure rate… two people failed within the first 24 hours and everyone else stopped in the last 15 to 20% of the circumnavigation, bored and broken because they’ve been out there longer than expected.”

“London to Portsmouth I should be able to do in three or four days. Once I’ve made that jump over the Thames Estuary hopefully I can count down the hours, as opposed to weeks.”

Previous attempts embarked from Tower Bridge. Collins is wrangling with the Ocean Rowing Society about his route. They want him to make a detour into (and out of) London, in order to pass beneath Tower Bridge.

“It’s a bit heated. They say it’s only fair [to include Tower Bridge]. I’m saying fair has nothing to do with it. My aim is to circumnavigate Great Britain, not circumnavigate Great Britain and go under Tower Bridge. I might have to go under it, turn around and go out again, which seems ludicrous.”

The Why

The big motivation for Collins is raising funds for James’ Place.

James’ Place is a charity that offers free and life-saving treatment to men in suicidal crisis. It was founded by the family of the 21-year-old student James Wentworth-Stanley, who took his own life in 2006. It has centres in Liverpool, London and Newcastle, with a fourth centre in Birmingham opening by early 2026.

Collins is aiming to raise £250,000. At the time of writing he has raised £60,000.

“James’ Place told me what it costs to save a life and I’ve put that figure in my head: £1800. I’ll picture that one person, each day of the row: today is about saving that one person’s life. I’m terrible at motivating myself, but I get motivated by helping other people.”

He says it will help him during the tough shifts: “In the early hours, when the tide has changed, there’s no moon and it’s raining. Am I going to get back on the oars? I fear there might be times when I say, no, I’m not doing that.”

Collins’ mental health advocacy stems from his own struggles. He suffers from depression. His lowest point came five years ago when he attempted to take his own life.

At the time he was living on a small boat near Burnham-on-Crouch, where he worked at Rannoch Adventure preparing ocean rowers for their crossings.

“For about a year, I’d started smoking a lot of pot and listening to a whole load of [the podcaster] Joe Rogan, thinking well if he says it’s fine to smoke pot, then it must be. I have a highly-addictive personality, and I was smoking the whole time.”

“I didn’t realise what it was doing to me up here,” says Collins tapping his head.

Ahead of his 30^th birthday loved ones sent him messages asking to meet up to celebrate.

“I told my friends I was with my family, and I told my family I was with my friends. I felt so sad. I didn’t feel like I could talk about my mental health to any of my friends or family. I didn’t want to see them, even though they were desperate to see me. [I thought] what’s the point – what’s the point in even being here?

“That night I intended to take my own life. I got everything ready. Luckily I decided to smoke one last joint and passed out.”

Collins awoke the following morning to the sound of tapping on his window.

“My clients had walked by, ‘time to go rowing Angus’. I jumped up, clicked into client-mode and refused to acknowledge what had happened. Days later I rang the NHS, but nothing came of it. I buried my head in the sand and gave up on getting better.”

The turning point came a month later, on a speaking gig in the USA, where he met his future wife Elsa.

“She called out my bullshit. ‘You don’t row across oceans for fun or to learn about leadership. You need to talk to your friends about this.’ That scared me, but she’s a winner and I didn’t want to lose her.”

Collins confided in his closest friend, an ex-Premiership rugby player. “He’s a man’s man. I was scared: I felt like by telling him I was depressed I was letting him down in some way. He was like, ‘I know, I’ve been keeping an eye on you’. He’d probably left it a bit late!”

Speaking up was a huge step forward. “My other friends had the same reaction, what can we do to help? I realised I’d buried it for far too long. Another eighteen months and then I probably wouldn’t be here.”

Collins was prescribed anti-depressants and started seeing a psychiatrist and a psychologist, “but being honest with my friends was the number one thing. My friends watch out for me; if I go incommunicado they’ll come and find me. I’m lucky to have friends like that”.

“My wife and my friends saved my life. I can celebrate that.”

Follow the link to find out more about James’ Place

Feature