An around the world sailor has taken refuge in Bermuda after a harrowing start to his voyage - when he thought he was certain to die.Speaking to the Halifax Herald News, Sergei Morozov said he was so certain he was about to die he recorded a farewell message to the people he was about to leave behind.Mr Morozov left Halifax on December 5 bound for Bermuda on the first leg of an around-the-world voyage in his 10.6 metre C&C sailboat Hikari.According to the Herald News, as soon as he reached the open waters of the Atlantic Ocean, he was greeted by trouble.The paper said that the self-steering system he had bought a few weeks before leaving Halifax failed.He was 300 miles from Halifiax and decided to sail by hand through rough waters."The next six days I steered by the hand almost 24 hours a day," he told the paper. "If I were to sleep and drift, I would drift to my death."He told the Herald News that by December 15, he had started to feel "amazing pain" in the left side of his chest.He sent a message to his daughter via a nearby ship that he would not arrive until December 19, but she contacted the United States Coast Guard and a search was launched for several days after he was overdue.Just before Christmas he was spotted by a ship about 240 miles south east of Bermuda and after taking on food and water, he turned around and headed for the Island, arriving Christmas Eve."I felt like (it was) my new birthday. Trust me, three weeks in the sea — two weeks in the rough sea and one week in the calm — with my water almost finished and my food almost finished, (I thought I would die)," he told the paper.When the repairs are complete, Mr Morozov will set sail for Grand Bahama Island. From there, he will pass through the Panama Canal to the Pacific Ocean on his way to French Polynesia and then on to Darwin, Australia.He is then slated to sail to Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, and then Cape Town, South Africa, before crossing the Atlantic to Brazil, up to Barbados and back to Halifax.