Oarsman's solo Antarctica quest

Mr Yeats has been planning the trip for four years

A 47-year-old oarsman plans to spend 10 months circumnavigating Antarctica solo in a rowing boat.

Ex-Merchant Navy seaman Colin Yeats, of Chandlers Ford, Hampshire, hopes to become the first person to complete the 11,300-mile trip in extreme weather.

Mr Yeats also plans to gather global warming data while battling hazardous huge "waves, gales, ice and fog".

He sets off in mid-December in his 22-foot rowing boat named after its Dorset designer Charlie Rossiter.

Mr Yeats, who has been planning the Antarctic Circumpolar Expedition for four years, said: "It is a massive, massive thing to do.

It will be the most difficult and hazardous circumnavigation of the globe Adventurer Colin Yeats

"It will be the most difficult and hazardous circumnavigation of the globe.

"This is very significant because there is an insufficiency of data from the Southern Ocean."

Mr Yeats, who served in the Merchant Navy on the QE2 liner turned troop-carrier during the Falklands War, will cram his twin-cabin vessel craft with freeze-dried food to provide himself with the 6,000 calories per day he will need to sustain himself.

He acknowledges that with the sea and air temperature rarely rising above five degrees centigrade the conditions for rowing there will be dangerous.

Mr Yeats, now looking for a major sponsor, will also have to row around the notorious Cape Horn in the closing stages of the voyage.