SIMON Chalk is due to begin today what has become an epic single-handed voyage across an unforgiving ocean.

Weather permitting, the 30-year-old Newton Abbot property developer will set out from Kalbarri in Western Australia aiming to row the 3,000 miles to Reunion Island off the coast of Madagascar.

He planned to have a partner for the Indian Ocean odyssey but, at the last minute, Mr Chalk and 24-year-old Robert Munslow parted company.

'It was a mutual decision,' Mr Chalk said. 'We haven't fallen out; it just wasn't going to work.'

The two had been training in England and even flew to Australia earlier than they planned, bringing forward their attempt by three months after a rumour began circulating that another crew was trying to beat them to the coveted cross-ocean record.

Now Mr Chalk aims to become the first Briton to cross the Indian ocean as well as the youngest and fastest.

He is bound to be concerned that the journey in the boat, True Spirit, will not end up the way his previous attempt did.

Last year, he and his then partner Bill Greaves were left for hours clinging to the upturned hull of their supposedly self-righting boat in shark-infested waters after it capsized at the height of a storm.

When he flew back to England he said he was a changed man, less concerned about materialistic things, but vowed even then to claim the record that had eluded him.

True Spirit is a Challenge class ocean rowboat – a design that has already successfully been rowed across the Atlantic and Pacific as well.

In 1997, Mr Chalk successfully rowed the Atlantic with George Rock, who is in Kalbarri with Mr Chalk's parents, helping with preparations for the challenge.

The oarsman's effort will mean that for the first time in history there will be solo rowers on all three oceans at the same time – and they are all British.

According to Oceanrowing.com, Martin Wood is rowing from La Gomera to Barbados, while Andrew Halsey is rowing from Peru to Australia.

Only one man – Anders Svedlund- has ever rowed the Indian Ocean single handedly before, and that was more than 30 years ago.