AN oarsome rower hoping to become the youngest person to row across the Atlantic twice in 12 months saw his Guinness world record dreams shatter only two weeks into the challenge.

Matt Inglesby, of Winwick Park, covered the 3,000 mile distance from Gran Canaria to Barbados in March last year and narrowly missed out on the fastest crossing record.

But the former Great Sankey High School pupil's second attempt alongside a crew of five ended in disaster at the end of last year as their boat was destroyed during a storm.

The courageous 22-year-old said: "The row was a bit of disaster from the start really, anything that could have gone wrong did.

"We were hit by a big weather system which pushed us in the wrong direction and at one point resulted in us being 60 miles in the wrong direction off the coast of Africa, we snapped an oar getting hit by a side wave which nearly sent me and the two other guys rowing into the water, our snack packs managed to get flooded which made all the contents inedible and as a result we had to go down to half rations as we knew the row would take at least 35 days and we only had 28 days of food and then one of the crew needed to get off the boat for medical reasons so we had to get him to another boat to be picked up."

What should have been a relatively simple transfer was made incredibly difficult however in the pitch black during a storm involving 40-46 mph winds and waves reaching 10 to 15 metres in height.

The plan was to row to the side of the boat so the poorly crew member could climb up the rescue ship's ladder before the rest of the crew rowed away but the wind and wave direction made it impossible and they could only watch as the huge rescue ship came down twice on their rowing boat in the waves snapping the stanchions for the spare oars.

Matt added: "The last one was the worst as the ship lifted and started to come down in slow motion.

"The ship was so close we could feel the heat of the engine and it came down on top once again, this time with more force smashing one of our cabins and making us lie flat to avoid being crushed.

"As it lifted again in slow motion a wave came and pushed us out of the stern of the ship to safety for the time being but after checking out our boat, we soon realised that there was no way to carry on due to the damage and radioed the ship to turn around and pick us up."

It meant a long journey home for Matt and his crew mates who spent seven days on the ship heading to Brazil before four flights to get him home.

He added: "I'm pretty disappointed as obviously I would rather completed it and got the youngest person to cross the Atlantic twice in one year record but sometimes you get a different adventure from the one you wanted.

"I'm not sure yet if I will attempt it again as there are other things I want to achieve so we'll have to see."