Adrian Flanagan knew that he was finally within touching distance of the end of his pioneering round-the-world voyage when the Royal Navy drew alongside him in the Solent and asked: “Would you like a cup of tea?”

The 46-year-old yachtsman arrived at the Royal Southern Yacht Club in Hamble yesterday as the record-holder for the first solo circumnavigation of the world via the Arctic Ocean north of Russia. After surviving tropical storms, being capsized twice around Cape Horn and almost losing his boat - and his life - when he was swept overboard without a line, Mr Flanagan returned to face his bank manager and the responsibilities of looking after two young sons.

Leaning over the side of his 11m (36ft) stainless steel sloop Barrabas as he sailed the last mile home, he told The Times that he was just grateful to be back in one piece. “The overriding emotion is relief,” he said. “It has been long. It has been hard. There have been risks. When you’re sailing out there in the middle of the ocean, particularly when you’re in danger, your mind tends to wander and you think what it would be like to come back. It’s actually happening. It’s not a dream any longer, it’s a reality.”

He was accompanied on the final leg of his 2½year journey by a flotilla of eight boats welcoming him home, including Trumpeter, a Royal Navy patrol boat equipped with twin Rolls-Royce engines, a kettle and teabags.

Also circling his boat was a yacht carrying his former wife, whom he had persuaded to act as his manager for the voyage, and their two sons, Benjamin, 9, and Gabriel, 6.

Once moored, he recounted how the most perilous moment of the voyage took place off the coast of Cornwall within days of setting off.

He failed to clip on his safety line during a storm in the Channel and felt a wave hit him as he stood on deck. “The next think I knew, I had landed in the drink,” he said. He lunged for the boat and managed to grab a guard wire with his middle finger, but could not pull himself back on board. He felt “with absolute certainty” that all was lost when a wave washed him back on deck. “I was very lucky. I guess my card wasn’t up.”

Another deadly threat awaited him near the shipping lanes off the coast of Brazil, where pirates regularly board vessels to steal at gunpoint. He first noticed a contact on his radar but thought little of it and fell asleep. “When I woke I saw 200 yards in front of me there was a stationary vessel. I thought it might be a patrol vessel, but she wasn’t. She was bristling with electronic surveillance. I sailed past her. I reckon she was waiting near the shipping lanes for a better target.”

The pirate vessel followed him for two days, waiting for him to make a mistake. “I armed my weapon. I had a pump-action shotgun on board specifically for that purpose. I stayed awake for 48 hours. I figured that if they were going to attack it was going to be in the early hours of the morning if they thought I wasn’t paying attention.” His vigilance paid off, and the pirates lost interest.

The next challenge was navigating the waters off Cape Horn, a three-week ordeal that only a handful of mariners have achieved single-handedly. Barrabas was knocked flat twice in quick succession, causing water to surge in and start a fire from a short circuit. He said it was then, surrounded by smoke and sewage, that he realised that he had reached the limit and that there was nothing else the storm could throw at him.

Mr Flanagan, a former osteopath whose home is near Bicester in Oxfordshire, said that it had taken all his money to realise his dream, which was inspired at the age of 15 when he read Gipsy Moth Circles the World, Sir Francis Chichester’s account of his epic voyage. He has spent his life savings and remortgaged his house, and will now have to sell the battered Barrabas to the highest bidder. “Would you do it again, you may ask. Never. Is it worth it? Yes. Absolutely.”

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