[2] On 30 January 2011, Smith and a crew of three volunteers (Andrew Bainbridge, David Hildred and John Russell, none younger than 56) departed from La Gomera in the Canary Islands in a custom-built raft, with the intention of crossing the Atlantic Ocean within three months, eventually arriving in Eleuthera.

The raft's superstructure consisted of a small hut within which the crew shared two bunks, while the hull was fashioned from plastic gas pipes which carried either supplies for ballast or air for buoyancy.

Its facilities were designed to be modest and it was equipped with a gas stove for cooking and telegraph poles which would act as masts, as well as solar panels, a wind generator and a foot pump which would power its electronic devices, as the crew used computers and digital cameras to communicate with the outside world and document their journey.

Smith had been interested in crossing the Atlantic by raft as far back as 1952, when he devised a plan to begin somewhere in the Canary Islands and to rely on fresh fish as his source of food.

AnTiki's crew consisted of David Hildred, a yacht master and civil engineer, and two experienced seamen Andy Bainbridge and John Russell.

The crew set sail with the intention of raising money for the clean water charity WaterAid and completed their journey successfully on the island of St. Maarten in the Caribbean.

[6] Smith then recruited another crew to join him on the final leg of the voyage to Eleuthera – Alison Porteous, Bruno Sellmer, Nigel Gallaher and Leigh Rooney.