Dave “Dinger” Bell has completed a solo, unsupported row across the Pacific and Indian oceans, stepping ashore in Kilifi, Kenya, on Friday after 327 days without setting foot on land. The former Royal Marine covered more than 15,000 nautical miles, about 28,000km.
Bell stooped to touch the sand before walking unsteadily up the beach, supported by his partner, Georgie, and was handed a beer. He landed north of Mombasa at 12:15 local time, 10:15 BST, on 2 October 2026.
“The last week has been so amazing. I've been the calmest I've ever been in my life,” he said to journalists as a supportive crowd waited nearby.
Bell, from Bere Regis in Dorset, had left Peru’s west coast on 9 November 2025 with food for 350 days and equipment aboard his carbon-fibre boat. He reached Kenya earlier than expected and said he still had enough food for another 20 days.
The expedition has raised more than £110,000 for Rock2Recovery, which supports veterans and blue-light workers affected by stress and PTSD.
Too quick for the weather
Bell’s route took him west across the Pacific, through the Coral Sea, Great Barrier Reef and Torres Strait, along Australia’s north coast and then across the Indian Ocean.
Bell stopped rowing for eight weeks in the South Pacific to avoid reaching the Coral Sea during cyclone season. He identified the enforced wait as his biggest challenge in almost 11 months afloat.
“I was too quick so I had to slow down,” he said.
“To sit, mid-ocean, knowing you've still got seven, eight, nine months at sea but not be rowing was one of the hardest things, psychologically, that I've ever had to deal with.”
Bell told the BBC before landfall that tidal conditions in the Torres Straight had required him to row for 16 hours a day over 10 days, leaving limited time for communications, repairs and sleep. In the final stretch, large swells tore one oar from the boat and broke the spare stowed overhead. With fewer than 300 miles left to Kilifi, he had two oars remaining.
Asked about sharks after landing, Bell said: “Yes, the most enjoyable part was the wildlife encounters I had.
“I was followed for weeks - one whitetip on one side and one on the other - and I would row for days like that.”
Another thousand miles
Bell had originally planned to finish in Mauritius, but southeasterly currents and weather forced him to reroute. By 11 September, he had decided to bypass the island and continue to Kenya.
“I have decided to miss out Mauritius and head for Kenya and add another 1000 miles to the journey, but to be honest I never lost sight of wanting to get there anyway,” he said in a voice message sent to Exeter Today.
Using up his stores had left the boat lighter than the team had allowed for in its original daily-distance estimates, he explained, while weather conditions made the Kenyan route feasible.
Bell had already spent 119 days rowing solo from New York to Newlyn, Cornwall, in 2021. On arrival then, he said: “I'm never doing anything dangerous ever again.”
Boats that weighed less, more effective solar panels and automatic steering later prompted him to wonder what else he could achieve. Podcasts, audiobooks and exchanged voice notes helped him avoid “clockwatching” during this crossing.
In one message recorded in the Indian Ocean, Bell told BBC Radio Solent that an “overwhelming sense of curiosity” had drawn him back to sea: “The idea struck me it might be achievable and I couldn't let that go.”
