A YACHTSMAN has abandoned his round-the-world trip after taking twice the time it can take to circumnavigate the globe just getting out of the Channel.

After 130 days at sea Adrian Cross reached no further than the French port of Brest, 200 miles away. Mr Cross, 50, a self-styled adventurer by trade, blamed an oil slick and rough seas.

He spent two months trying to get his boat, Gentoo, out of St Malo harbour while being driven back by high winds, only to encounter an oil slick from the sunken cargo ship Prestige. Coastguards warned him to turn back or risk his 31ft yacht being destroyed.

He said: “Some people go around the world and not see a storm. We’ve been like a cork in a washing machine. I probably could have walked the 500 miles to France by now.” His log repeatedly read: “A quick turn round and yes, you’ve guessed it — back in St Malo.”

Mr Cross, from Thringstone, Leicestershire, who has sailed to the Arctic and the Antarctic, set out from the Isle of Wight in November. He had hoped to lecture on the environment during his trip, Having had to return home, he said: “I’m giving talks on the state of the planet along the way — and here I am, stuck in Britain as a result of those factors. I’ve never known anything like the weather we had. I think it was a freak result of the Greenhouse effect.

Mr Cross is to try again next month. But his route takes him within a few miles of Iraq.

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