Alan ‘Woody’ Wood is an author, filmmaker and round-the-world sailor. From 2017 to 2025, he and his wife Irenka sailed 40,000 miles through 40 countries and territories with their three children aboard their 53-foot yacht, Mothership, schooling them as they went.

Alan ‘Woody’ Wood is an author, filmmaker and round-the-world sailor. From 2017 to 2025, he and his wife Irenka sailed 40,000 miles through 40 countries and territories with their three children aboard their 53-foot yacht, Mothership, schooling them as they went.

Along the way they were chased by armed skiffs off Sudan, lost their steering between Sri Lanka and the Maldives, and learned to fix almost everything themselves in remote corners of the world.

Woody documented the journey across the Mothership Adrift YouTube channels, which have attracted around 23,000 subscribers and 3.7 million views. In 2023, the family won Yachting Monthly’s Brian Black Memorial Award for video.

His book, If You Want to Do It. Do It!, was published in September 2026, and he and Irenka gave six talks at the 2026 Southampton International Boat Show.

Now back in Brighton after selling Mothership, Woody writes and speaks about adventure, family life, risk, self-reliance and what happens when you actually do the thing you’ve spent years dreaming about.