Just as we stepped aboard Samsara, bobbing on the sunny waters alongside Poole Quay, my wife, Cathy, was handed a pair of tweezers by her skipper, John Passmore.

Holding the 77-year-old’s gnarled right foot in her hands, she successfully extracted a tiny shard of swarf from his sole. ‘Better than trying to do it with a mirror,’ he said, stirring powdered milk into our tea.

John does most things alone. He lives alone, sails alone and writes alone. Meet-ups with his wife, Tamsin, and six grown-up children – two from a former marriage – take place on special occasions or holidays, but after that, for John, it’s back to his beloved Rival 32.

Long-distance sailing and preparing for long-distance sailing is, for John, therapy. He realised some years ago that his hermit-like existence coupled with frantic bursts of socialising – enjoyed by the thousands who read his Old Man Sailing blog – was behaviour out of the ordinary.

He sought professional advice and discovered he suffers from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

‘But not just that, I’m apparently among the one per cent of the most severe cases,’ John said proudly as he awaited delivery of a new mainsail, generously supplied by Paul Lees of Crusader Sails.

He dealt with his ‘unsettling diagnosis’ the only way he knew how: he sailed away and wrote about it. His book Faster, Louder, Riskier, Sexier. A wonderful life with ADHD, is the result, and neatly sums up this complex sailor.

All being well, as you read this, he will have started out on the loneliest voyage of all: a solo circumnavigation – now that’s extreme therapy.

He left Plymouth on 27 August, 60 years to the day after Francis Chichester set out on his one-stop voyage around the world in Gipsy Moth IV.

John is following in the wake of his childhood hero and plans, like Chichester, to stop only in Sydney before completing his circuit back in Plymouth sometime in 2027.

It is not the first time John has tailed his mentor offshore: in 1988 he completed the OSTAR in another Rival 32, Largo.

This had been an ambition since John, aged 11, listened to a lecture on the solo transatlantic race given by Chichester at the Walton & Frinton Yacht Club in 1960.

Article continues below…

Gipsy Moth IV: rebirth of a British legend

Katy Stickland talks to Gipsy Moth IV’s new owner Simon Oberholzer about his passion for the yacht and the plans…

50th anniversary of Sir Robin Knox-Johnston’s Golden Globe Race victory

Sir Robin Knox-Johnston's epic 312 day circumnavigation aboard his beloved Suhaili will be celebrated in Falmouth on 22 April

‘Chichester has had a raw deal; since Robin Knox-Johnston sailed solo, and non-stop round the world, he has been almost completely forgotten, so I thought it time to resurrect the memory of a man who took a boat, almost impossible to sail, around the world,’ said John.

Chichester struggled for weeks trying to get Gipsy Moth IV to sail herself, and when I sailed aboard the 53ft ketch on one leg of her Trade Wind voyage following her rebuild courtesy of a YM campaign, her then skipper told me: ‘Steering GMIV is like trying to manoeuvre a supermarket trolley on ice.’

In 2004, Gipsy Moth IV was taken by low-loader from her concrete dock in Greenwich to Camper & Nicholson’s yard in Gosport to be rebuilt.

The mission was to celebrate and revisit Sir Francis Chichester’s 1966-67 voyage in time for its 40th anniversary and was inspired by Yachting Monthly’s editor, the late Paul Gelder.

When the lorry driver towing GMIV along the M25 stopped for a tea break at Clacket Lane Services, Paul and I both took some bits off the ketch’s old rig as keepsakes.

Mine included a bent bottle-screw, some shackles, and a Tufnol block that have been in my shed ever since.

At Poole, I handed them to John, hoping they would act as a lucky charm… they had been around the world and back once and would be there for a second successful circumnavigation, I thought.

‘Aha,’ said John, handling the old rigging, ‘I can use those.’

ADHD or no, John is the consummate ocean sailor, turning all tangible objects into tools for his mission.

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