At 56 years of age,transatlantic rower Jim Shekhdar should be hanging up his oars . . . but the father of two is about to embark on one of the most treacherous stretches of sea in the world...

WHAT makes a person want to step into an eight-metre rowing boat and head off into 9,000 miles of the roughest, most iceberg-studded seas on the planet - alone?

It's a question that few could answer - Isle of Wight solo yachtswoman Ellen MacArthur might understand, or Mike Noel-Smith and Rob Abernethy, who tried and failed to row the Indian Ocean last week.

Add the name Jim Shekhdar to the few. At 56, most of Jim's contemporaries are working on their golf handicaps and trying to trim their spare tyres.

Jim has postponed the golf and is eating as much butter and eggs as he can to put on bulk. Where he's going, he'll be using 6,500 calories a day and he says he needs the reserve padding.

Jim has already rowed the Atlantic and is in the Guinness Book of Records as the first man to complete an unassisted solo row of the Pacific - pictures of a bushy-bearded Jim wading like Neptune on to an Australian shore made front pages all over the world in 2001.

But these impressive feathers in Jim's adventuring cap have not cured him of wanderlust. Just two months after getting home from conquering the Pacific he was planning an even greater untried exploit - to row alone across the treacherous Southern Ocean from New Zealand to Cape Town, South Africa.

Now the countdown to Jim's Ocean Challenge 2003 is almost complete and his new boat - dazzling in Day Glo yellow and black - has been built in a huge hangar at Marchwood Industrial Estate near Southampton.

Jim is due to ship his boat out to the New Zealand coastal town of Bluff by the end of this month, and plans to set off on his epic crossing by August 30 to make the most of the southern hemisphere's summer. It could be six months, or up to a year before he touches land again.

In Southampton, towering hulls of ocean-going yachts dwarf the as yet unnamed rowing boat as craftsmen from New Forest glassfibre moulders Blondecell give her some finishing touches.

One of the Solent's most well-known yachtsmen, broadcaster Dennis Skillicorn, had steered Jim - a north Londoner - towards the small but specialist firm based at Cracknore Hard.

Blondecell's team are used to unusual commissions. They have built gondolas for airships, flight simulators and floating offices, but Jim's boat posed a real challenge. They had to build a small vessel capable of surviving mountainous freezing waters, possible whale strikes or collisions with multi-ton flotsam, and carry all the equipment needed to keep a man alive for up to a year at sea.

Blondecell's technical manager Warwick Buckley - a trophy-winning veteran of the Whitbread Round the World Race - knows what Jim will face.

"It is like living in a washing machine permanently set to cold wash," he said.

"The water of the Southern Ocean peaks at two degrees, and then there's the wind chill factor. The guy is pushing the limits of endurance, and he's doing it solo.

"We have done our best to build the boat as strong as she can be - five or ten times as strong as an ordinary boat of its size and type. But ultimate success depends on whether the designer did his calculations right, and Jim has done enough to prepare himself."

Dorset ocean-rower Mark Stubbs, who traversed the Atlantic alongside Jim in 1997, is also stunned by his pal's latest plan.

"The experiences he is going to have are beyond my imagination. I have no advice to give him. The Southern Ocean has never been done this way before," said the Poole firefighter.

But the man himself - who had a hip operation only 18 months ago - is brimming with confidence and enthusiasm. As Jim admired his shiny new boat he recalled his close encounter with an oil tanker during his Pacific crossing two years ago.

"This one is Kevlar, bullet proof. If a tanker hits this the tanker will come off worst," he said.

"I was chased by white-tipped sharks last time too - an aggressive gang attacked my boat. They'd break their teeth on this one."

Jim is not alarmed by the recent failure of rowers Mike Noel-Smith and Rob Abernethy in the Indian Ocean, or by the knowledge that the only other man to attempt the Southern Ocean row had to give up, disabled by gangrene caused by the constant cold and wet.

"I've got a double cabin this time - wet and dry - so I can stand up in the wet area and lie down in the dry," said Jim, pointing to a coffin-sized space stretching under the bow.

"The boat is built to surf, and self-right if she tips. I'm strapped in so I should be all right. But like Mike and Rob found, you can't plan for all accidents."

The rowing boat is honeycombed with storage lockers under its strengthened decks. Jim is taking food worth £7,500 - donations still welcome, he says - as well as clothes, a spare pair of 12-foot oars and all the safety equipment he can cram in.

Jim will also allow himself the expensive luxury of a satellite phone. The father of two will allot two minutes a week to each family member.

"In the Pacific, when the phone failed after I was blown off course, it did get very lonely and quiet out there," he said.

"I don't discuss my trips much with my daughters. It worries them. And my wife Jane can't quite believe I'm off again. She has called this trip 'excessive and unnecessary,'" Jim laughed ruefully.

"When I finished the last trip, I have never felt so emotional and happy in my life because my family were standing on the beach. They came into the sea to help me. It was fantastic. But within weeks I was looking for another 'first' to conquer, and rowing alone across the Southern Ocean fits the bill."

Jim Shekhdar still needs sponsorship and a name for his boat.Visit his website www.oc2003.com.