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A forty year old
policeman from west Cornwall, Sean first
started kayaking at the age of ten with the
Scouts and played on rivers and in the sea.
He soon developed an interest in kayak
racing and represented Great Britain as a
junior in both marathon and sprint racing,
becoming Junior National Champion in 1983
and achieving 6th place in the K4 1000m at
the Junior World Championships.
He went on to compete for GB at senior level
for several years but never managed to
repeat his success as a junior, probably
because he spent too much time playing on
rivers and in the surf, representing England
at the World Waveski Championships in 1989
and reaching the semi-finals in the European
Championships in 1990.
 Sean began sea kayaking in 1996 when his
good friend Robin Feloy persuaded him to try
his Inuk, a ‘high performance sea kayak’
designed by Robin that allowed Sean to
paddle with a technique similar to a racing
kayak using wing paddles. Sean fell in love
with the craft and with the concept of long
distance sea kayaking. In 1997 he kayaked
‘Around the Sharp End’ of the UK; the
coastline of Devon and Cornwall and the
Isles of Sicily in 9 days then the following
year set a record for the fastest crossing
of the St George’s Channel of the Irish Sea
with two friends; Ian Wilson and Jim
Morrissey of 11hours 6minutes. In 1998 he
circumnavigated the north of Scotland with
Ian Wilson, paddling north from Fort
William, traversing the ‘Roof of Britain’
and returning to Fort William via the
Caledonian Canal, a 500mile journey in 13
days.
Having built up his expedition experience
Sean felt ready to take on his greatest
challenge; the first solo circumnavigation
of the UK and Ireland. He decided to make
the journey even more difficult by trying to
include in his circumnavigation every
inhabited island and in September 2004 after
six months and approximately 4,500miles he
completed the challenge, the longest kayak
journey ever undertaken in British waters.
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