“It was just relentless,” Bell said. “I am a pretty light sleeper so I didn’t sleep during the day. So the night shifts were so hard. We were rowing through a wind farm and I thought ‘I don’t remember that on the map?’ Then about an hour later I saw a dragon fly over the moon and thought, ‘Ah, I am hallucinating’.”

One night, Merotra began to panic. A ship was bearing down on them, he said. Bell entered the cabin and tried to radio the ship, but he could not see it on the automatic identification system screen, which shows nearby vessels. Bell was frantically trying to contact the ship as Merotra became increasingly animated about an imminent crash.

“It’s getting closer,” Merotra shouted.

Then he realised he was hallucinating. The ship was the moon.

“You spend so long facing backwards, you start to think you’re moving backwards with no point of reference,” Bell said.

Since getting back to land, Bell has struggled to find his land legs. He spent all of Tuesday tripping over himself.

“The day after, your body thinks ‘finally, we’ve stopped rowing, time to heal’,” Bell said. “It’s seized up. I’ve got claw hands and I can’t close my fist. I have to ask my mum to open bottles for me.

“The arrival was a whirlwind. We hadn’t seen anyone for so long, then suddenly, there’s people and boats everywhere, and the super yachts are letting off their horns,” Bell said.