Not many people would give it all up to live on a boat for more than two decades, especially if they have little or no knowledge about sailing! Not so Pete Atkinson, who did exactly what the rest of us only dream about…

I had always been fascinated by animals that lived in the sea, but, as a teenager, when I watched the TV documentaries of Jacques Cousteau I became obsessive. I wanted his lifestyle!

So, when I was 17 years old I built the first of many acrylic underwater camera housings. My lack of academic talent didn’t stop me from studying marine zoology at Bangor University in North Wales and for the first time I took an interest in education. Luckily I got a job at the university after graduating which enabled me to buy a dilapidated three-bedroom house. It cost £5,300. I renovated this completely, sold it and bought a classic wooden yacht built in 1935. became my home for the next 17 years and 83,000 kilometres.

I knew nothing about sailing, boats or navigation, but I read lots of books with the singleminded passion of someone trying to escape the grimy rat-race of England for the promise of the South Seas.

I sailed across the Atlantic in 1983 (with my girlfriend), spent a year in the Caribbean working on a motor-yacht and in 1985 entered the Pacific through the Panama Canal on my own - my girlfriend having sensibly run off with someone taller, better looking and a lot wealthier than me!

From Panama to the Marquesas of French Polynesia was my longest solo trip, 34 days and almost 4,000 nautical miles (7,400 kilometres).

That voyage forms the first chapter of my book,

and sets the tone for the underwater adventures that follow.

For 20 years (the last seven years aboard a bigger, much drier, aluminium yacht) I sailed all over the tropical Pacific, shooting pictures (on film) and writing for sailing and diving magazines. I sold stock pictures through agencies. It was a marginal living until I started shooting for Getty Images.

It was, in many ways, an idyllic life, with immense freedom from bureaucracy. When I sailed from England I had no sailing qualifications, no life-raft, no in-date flares, no radio, no insurance of any kind, but there was nothing to stop me from clearing customs and sailing away. I did have a second-hand plastic sextant though.

The thing about sailing is this: When it’s good, it can be utterly sublime, but when it’s bad it can be terrifying and unrelentingly miserable. And