Former firefighter plans 5,500-mile charity row

A man planning to row 5,500 miles (8,800km) across the Indian Ocean in 100 days to remember his friend who died wants to raise £500,000 for charity.

Billy Taylor, 52, from Selsey in West Sussex, will row from Exmouth, Western Australia, to Mombasa in Kenya in early June.

The former firefighter wants to raise awareness about early onset dementia and Parkinson's disease after his school friend, Alex Flynn, died in 2022 after living with Parkinson's disease dementia.

He credits his friend for inspiring him to take up ocean rowing.

Mr Taylor will be joined by three other crew members on an 8.8m by 1.5m (29ft by 5ft) carbon fibre boat raising money for Race Against Dementia, an organisation focused on research to find a cure for the disease, and Rock2Recovery, a mental health charity supporting veterans and those in armed forces.

Mr Taylor's friend was diagnosed aged 34, which forced the pair to have "some very long, honest, open and frank conversations about what it was going to mean for him".

An estimated 982,000 people live with dementia in the UK, while more than a third do not have a diagnosis, according to Alzheimer's Society.

The ocean rower said speaking to people with loved ones living with dementia "struck me that this [disease] is so prolific".

"It's horrific. It robs people of the person they are," he added.

He hopes his ocean row will help others learn about the impact of dementia on people and their families, and raise funds towards vital research into the disease.

The crew will row in pairs, rowing for two hours and breaking for two hours over 100 days.

Mr Taylor said he chose a crew made up of two men and two women to represent men and women equally.

"It's quite the levelling platform the the ocean, so it was nice to represent the girls and guys getting on well together and achieving something together," he added.

He has rowed the Indian Ocean once before, once across the Pacific Ocean from California to Hawaii and three times across the Atlantic.

The crew will also share the journey via video link to the classrooms of thousands of schools in the UK.

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