Follow Oliver Hicks's adventures

Armed with a pile of books, a five-month supply of food, and a good luck e-mail from his good friend Prince William, Oliver Hicks, the British adventurer, set off from Australia in January in an attempt to be the first person to row solo around the world.

By Thursday his £200,000 adventure had been abandoned and the weary 27-year-old and his 24ft boat the Flying Carrot had to be towed to dry land on New Zealand’s south island after bad conditions aborted his journey.

He had planned to make it to Antarctica as part of his round-the-world mission, but abandoned that idea in favour of making it safely on his own to New Zealand, 1,200km (750 miles) from where he set off.

That goal was cut short after this week’s bad weather meant that he was forced to accept outside help and be towed ashore.

“I’m disappointed, but it was really the only sensible decision to do, our hands were forced by the circumstances,” Mr Hicks told The Times, after he had enjoyed the three essentials upon stepping on to land for the first time in three months: a long shower, a roast meal and a nice cold beer.

Mr Hicks — who in 2005 became the youngest person to row the Atlantic — left Tasmania in southern Australia in January but soon found that the three years of planning for his adventure had to be thrown out the window as the specially built boat was slower and heavier than expected and conditions much worse than anticipated.

“At the rate I was going it was going to take me five years to achieve what I was aiming for,” he said. “And with only a five-month supply of food I would have become pretty skinny.”

After adjusting his mission to end in New Zealand, Mr Hicks had to again change his plans and call for help when strong winds kept pushing the Flying Carrot further out towards the Southern Ocean.

His project manager, George Olver, flew over from London last week and enlisted the help of a local fishing crew on the Shangri La, who found the Briton about 30 miles due south of Stewart Island, off New Zealand’s south island.

Rewi Bull, captain of the Shangri La, told New Zealand’s Southland Times that he was approached by a local on Bluff, the closest land to where the Briton was stranded at sea. “I was having a nice day on the couch and Meri rang and said, ‘You don’t want to go out in a storm do ya?’,” Mr Bull told the paper.

Writing on his blog on the Virgin Global Row website, Mr Hicks described the last 24 hours: “They found me rolling in about 40kts of wind and about a 4m swell . . .8 hours and one broken tow line later they made it back to Stewart Island”

Mr Hicks said “it was a good trip, just cut short”. He spent the past 95 days “fishing, rowing and reading books” including the autobiography of the British adventurer Sir Ranulf Fiennes, John Buchan adventure novels and Roald Dahl’s The Fantastic Mr Fox.

Yesterday Mr Hicks was trying to find a trailer for his boat and preparing to return to Britain, where he will have a meeting with his sponsors, Virgin and Google, and begin planning his next adventure.

“We will see what happens next,” he said. “I’m keen to put together another project . . . but maybe next time I’ll take less books and more people.”