SAILOR Steve White ‘just got on and did’ a gruelling 28,000-mile race because abandonment meant financial ruin for his family.

The father-of-four, of Charlton Down, Dorchester, not only battled with freezing temperatures, rough seas and the risk of hitting whales and icebergs but he also knew his family faced bankruptcy if his old patched-up boat fell apart.

Steve, 36, said: “It’s always a possibility that you’re going to dismast and have to pull out – it’s just one of those things you have to be prepared to accept.

“But in our case it would have been hard to swallow because if we had lost the boat on the other side of the world it would have meant certain financial ruin, as well as the end of that part of the dream.”

He added: “I just had to get on and do it.”

The former classic car restorer not only completed the race and became the ninth British sailor ever to do so but he also beat all the odds and finished eighth out of 30 competitors.

Since crossing the French finish-line last month in Les Sables d’Olonne, Steve’s story has gone global.

He said: “I knew some people were following my progress but I didn’t envisage it to be on the scale it was.

“I couldn’t walk around Les Sables without people knowing about us.”

After a troubled start in the race when a generator exhaust and battery box filled the boat with fumes and smoke, his fortunes turned and Steve enjoyed the Southern Ocean ‘from start to finish’.

He said: “If you imagine it was everything on a very grand scale – a lot of wind and very, very large waves – when you turn the corner and go into the Atlantic the waves feel like they’ve completely switched off.

“It was six weeks of the best sailing on Earth in a very beautiful and wild place.”

He added: “My biggest drive for the next Vendee is to go down there again with a bigger and better boat.”

Aside from a strapped-up arm due to tennis elbow, Steve returned from his 109 days, 00 hours, 36 minutes and 55 seconds at sea more relaxed and healthy than ever.

Steve said he did not feel lonely because there was ‘always something to do’ but Christmas Day was particularly hard.

He said: “I missed my family a lot at Christmas and had an attack of the glums.

“I was conscious it had been three months without seeing them and five months to the day that I hadn’t been home.”

His epic voyage taught him to prioritise time with wife Kim and children Euan, six, Issac, nine, Eryn, 16, and Jason, 20.

Steve also missed the family’s pets, which include a goose, ducks, seven cats, two guinea pigs, two housetrained giant rabbits and three dogs.

He said: “Hopefully, if I get some more budget for my next Vendee campaign it won’t be necessary for me to work quite so hard or as many hours as I have done before.”

A total of 19 of the 30 skippers who began the race last November had to abandon due to injury, equipment failure or collisions with sea mammals.

Steve said it was hard to benefit in the rankings from other people’s misfortunes until someone told him to ‘get a grip’ and accept that the Vendee is a ‘race of attrition’.

Now his sights are firmly set on the next Vendee Globe in 2012.

Steve said: “The campaign has already begun, firstly because you have to strike while the iron is hot and secondly, we have no financial cushion – we are still in the same state as when we started financially.

“I’m definitely lucky to have a supportive family.”

Steve has two meetings coming up to further the campaign, which are ‘not with people who can help directly but who are going to make introductions to people who could’.

He said: “I’m talking about extremely powerful businessmen who can back a project on a whim.

“The campaign has moved up a league – you can’t finance it with a bit of money here and there.

“You need a big sponsor and need to get in front of people in the corporate world.”

Steve’s last campaign was saved at the 11th hour by six-figure donations from mystery benefactors whose only requirement was that he named the boat after the Toe In The Water veterans’ charity.

He said: “Our previous backers have set me up for the rest of my life by enabling me to do this.

“We’ve been put on the map, you might say.”