Friday 5 Feb 2021 New sea wall helping protect railway through Dawlish seven years on from devastating storm Region & Route: Wales & Western I’ve told you kids about the captain,” said Dad, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray. “He was an incredible man. The people who were going to recreate his first and second voyages didn’t get their act together in time, so this is the last opportunity.”

I read an extract in The Guardian and waited impatiently for publication day, I’ve been going for long walks so I had more opportunities to listen - it’s so gripping. I was left with such a feeling of awe for Suzanne and what she has achieved. A couple of months later, Dad announced another decision – Jon and I were going to live in Rotorua on our own, so that Jon could start going to a school there. I would continue to learn by post, Dad told me, and would be responsible for looking after Jon, who was by then 15. When Wavewalker was repaired, he would start his job and come to live with us, while Mum kept sailing Wavewalker with another skipper, to make more money from paying crew.

Cambridge bookseller to sail across world at 76

More weeks passed. Somehow, I managed my loneliness and focused on the only thing that might help – studying as hard as I possibly could, staring at my books out on the wooden veranda. By doing this, I could make my way through each day without breaking down.

In 1976 Gordon Cook, who runs the Internet Bookshop in Cambridge, and his wife Mary and children Sue and Jon voyaged along the route taken by his namesake Captain James Cook 200 years earlier. I slumped against the seat. Mum folded a sheet of paper into quarters, ripping it along the creases. She pushed the pieces across the table towards us. Well,” he said, after a long pause. “I guess I have no choice. I’ll move the money into the account.” The Lady Swathling Award, for an outstanding feat of seamanship and navigation, was presented to Gordon Cook from Gloucestershire in recognition of his outstanding seamanship and navigation when he successfully sailed and navigated a severely damaged 30 ton yacht to safety saving the lives of all six people onboard. Like Tara Westover’s seminal memoir Education, Heywood makes fierce and heroic efforts over the years to educate herself, seeing it as a way of escape from family entrapment. (Unlike Westover, however, the writing itself is not as memorably compelling, although the narrative is, if overlong.) At one point, aged 16, Heywood is left alone for months with her brother in New Zealand, while their parents try to make some money by voyaging with more paying crew. Against truly remarkable odds she is granted an interview to Oxford, and then a university place.The quiet engulfed me after I hung up the phone. I brought my legs up on to the sofa and buried my head between my knees. The family miraculously escaped death when their schooner Wavewalker was capsized and badly damaged by monstrous waves in the Indian Ocean. In the next few weeks, the grandfather of six will be flying to New York to inspect a 39-foot schooner which he believes will be ideal for his single-handed voyage.

When my plane reached Tokyo, I stumbled out, carried along in a wave of travellers. I heard laughter and turned to see a girl looking at me. “You have a lot of luggage,” she said. “Let me help.”

New sea wall helping protect railway through Dawlish seven years on from devastating storm

The interior was unfinished, but bunks and cupboards were already taking shape, half-formed in the gloom.