Tim Whitrow
Tim has always gone looking for the next big thing to try. He loves life, he loves adventure, he loves animals, and he's never been one to sit still. Sailing around the world alone is the latest idea, and the biggest.

A life that led here






Twenty years in wine
Tim spent about twenty years as a winemaker, mostly in South Australia. The work took him all over China and the United States, and he once went to Cyprus and set up a winery there in three months.


Pilot, diver and a soft touch for animals
When Tim isn't working he's usually in the air or under the water. He flies light aircraft, he dives, and there's hardly a photo of him without an animal nearby: dogs, a possum on his shoulder, a baby monkey in his hands.




The crash
In 2019 Tim was flying a light plane on a film set in Renmark, South Australia, during the shoot of Roadkill, his nephew's first feature film. The plane crashed. Tim survived, but he lost his right leg below the knee.
He's lived with a prosthetic leg ever since.
Then he bought a boat
Tim recovered, went back to living the way he always had, and bought Sea Dragon, a 56ft Formosa ketch built in the 1980s. Now he's getting her ready to take him all the way around the world, on his own, without stopping.

Losing a limb isn't what defines you. How you deal with it is.
That's the message Tim wants to send to the amputee community, and sailing around the world is how he's sending it.
Everyone has to find their way through life. Tim's doing it on his own, on one leg, in a 56ft ketch, all the way around the planet. It's a bit harder that way, but it's the same journey.
And it's for everyone, not only amputees. Everyone has their own challenges. Some you can see and some you can't. However hard the task, anyone can do it if they set their mind to it and make it a priority.

Come along for the ride
Read the captain's log for updates from the refit now, and from sea once Tim leaves Adelaide in October 2027.