Dave 'Dinger' Bell's Solo Row From Peru to Kenya: The Documentary

Two oceans, one boat

Dave "Dinger" Bell, from Bere Regis in Dorset, served twenty years in the Royal Marines. In 2021 he rowed solo across the North Atlantic from New York to Cornwall in 119 days. Lighter boats and better solar panels and autopilots drew him back to a bigger idea: two full oceans, continent to continent, in one go.

His boat, Billy No Mates, was a new carbon-fibre craft from The Ocean Rowing Company, designed for up to four rowers. He loaded food for 350 days and rowed out of La Punta, Callao, the port of Lima, on 9 November 2025. The rules were strict: no support boat, no resupply, and never setting foot on land. When his team suggested a rest stop in the Marquesas, he refused, because going ashore would have ended the row as an unsupported crossing.

Too fast, then knocked down

His first problem was speed. Ahead lay the Coral Sea, where cyclone season runs from about November to April, so from March he cut his distance and for weeks rowed as little as an hour a day. He later told the BBC that sitting mid-ocean unable to row was one of the hardest things he had dealt with.

In May a wave knocked the boat down in the Coral Sea, damaging the electrics and setting off his emergency beacon, according to Explorersweb. At the end of May he rowed sixteen-hour days for ten days through the Torres Strait, then anchored at sea to rest without going ashore. In early August, in the Indian Ocean, a wave in a 30-knot gale flooded his cabin through the air vents and set off the beacon again. He asked the coastguard to stand by, the weather eased, and no rescue was needed.

Not Mauritius, but Kenya

The plan had been to finish in Mauritius, but currents and weather kept pushing him north. On 7 September he committed to mainland Africa instead, adding roughly a thousand nautical miles. On 2 October 2026 a local fisherman guided him through the reef at Kilifi, north of Mombasa. He touched the sand for the first time in 327 days, with twenty days of food still on board, and was welcomed by Kilifi's governor, Gideon Mung'aro.

Who it was for

He rowed for Rock2Recovery, a UK charity that supports serving personnel, veterans, their families and emergency workers living with stress and PTSD. By 15 October 2026 the fundraising page showed £142,688, including a £5,000 donation signed "William Wales".

The record question

His team and much of the press describe the row as the first unsupported row from South America to Africa and the longest unsupported ocean row. As of 15 October 2026, neither the Ocean Rowing Society nor Guinness World Records had ratified it. Jacob Adoram's Guinness record for the longest time rowed solo across an ocean, 335 days and 22 hours, still stands; the film's comparison with Adoram is about distance, not time. The 28,718 km figure comes from Bell's public tracker.