WEBVTT - The Dream Family Sailing Trip That Turned Into A Nightmare 0:00:00.360 --> 0:00:03.480 This episode of Headgame was recorded on gadigal Land. 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:08.440 It's nineteen eighty five and we're in a hut in 0:00:08.520 --> 0:00:12.520 a small lakeside town in New Zealand. This is where 0:00:12.640 --> 0:00:15.880 sixteen year old Suzanne Hayward will call home for the 0:00:15.880 --> 0:00:19.800 next nine months as her parents take off on another 0:00:19.960 --> 0:00:23.720 sailing adventure. For the last ten years, she's been on 0:00:23.840 --> 0:00:28.800 board the Wavewalker, fulfilling her father's dream of sailing the world. 0:00:29.960 --> 0:00:33.200 While the idea of a childhood filled with sun, sea 0:00:33.320 --> 0:00:39.040 and adventure sounds idyllic, the reality is much tougher, with 0:00:39.200 --> 0:00:44.360 access to healthcare, formal education, and friendships all near impossible 0:00:44.440 --> 0:00:49.159 to come by. Suzanne is desperate to learn and has 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:53.760 been hassling her parents about trying to go to university instead. 0:00:54.320 --> 0:00:57.960 Inside this wooden shack, she's been tasked with looking after 0:00:58.000 --> 0:01:01.920 her younger brother, helping him to get an education, ensurre 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:04.840 and the house is clean and that he is fed. 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:10.839 She does exactly that, but refuses to abandon her aspirations. 0:01:10.880 --> 0:01:15.200 In the process, she starts to write letters to every 0:01:15.400 --> 0:01:21.160 university she's ever heard of, Cambridge, Oxford and Harvard, and 0:01:21.280 --> 0:01:29.240 against the odds, she hears back from Oxford I'm at 0:01:29.240 --> 0:01:34.959 Middleton and this is headgame today. Susanne Hayward on pursuing 0:01:35.000 --> 0:01:42.280 her own dream despite being forced to live her fathers. 0:01:42.520 --> 0:01:48.440 I am super delighted to have Susanne Haywood first and foremost. 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:49.040 How are you. 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:52.000 I'm good, Thank you, very good to be talking to 0:01:52.040 --> 0:01:52.720 you this morning. 0:01:53.320 --> 0:01:55.560 Do you know what I couldn't wait to talk to 0:01:55.600 --> 0:01:58.320 you because I reenacted the mutiny on the Bounty from 0:01:58.360 --> 0:02:02.840 seventeen eighty nine in twenty seventeen, and you know, I 0:02:02.880 --> 0:02:05.360 thought that was quite the adventure. Then I read your 0:02:05.920 --> 0:02:09.120 let's call it a resume your career and I was 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:13.960 just like, you just sunk my ship completely. So I 0:02:13.960 --> 0:02:15.520 can't wait to get into it. To be fair, I'm 0:02:15.560 --> 0:02:18.280 super excited about this one. And I'm going to go 0:02:18.480 --> 0:02:21.799 right back to the beginning, Susanne, because at the age 0:02:21.840 --> 0:02:26.400 of six, your father made a choice to drag you 0:02:26.440 --> 0:02:28.600 all out of England and to sail around the world. 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:31.160 But that was at the age of six years old 0:02:31.200 --> 0:02:34.120 to super young, going back before then, what was your 0:02:34.280 --> 0:02:37.080 first ever memory? 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:41.320 So my first memory is being a little kid in 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:44.240 England and I have a younger brother who's a year 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:48.600 younger than me, and I remember standing next to his crib, 0:02:49.880 --> 0:02:53.000 and in fact, there's a very there's an incident very 0:02:53.000 --> 0:02:56.480 early on when I was very little where I found 0:02:55.960 --> 0:02:58.960 a kind of set of I think they were kind 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:02.120 of Paris. They were aspirins actually in the cupboard, and 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:05.080 they were at the time they were multi colored, and 0:03:05.120 --> 0:03:07.280 I apparently kind of fed them to him through the 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:11.760 kind of bars with his crib as results of which 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:13.520 I think both of us had to be rushed off 0:03:13.520 --> 0:03:16.560 to the hospital to have our stomachs pumped. I think 0:03:16.560 --> 0:03:18.760 it was done out of you know, kind of love, 0:03:18.880 --> 0:03:21.720 not hatred as it were. I thought I was. I 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:22.799 was sharing a good thing. 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:27.440 Yeah, absolutely. At the age of six, between your first 0:03:27.440 --> 0:03:32.520 memory and when your father sort of decided to leave 0:03:32.600 --> 0:03:36.600 and live his dream and drag you along with him, 0:03:36.840 --> 0:03:39.120 what was your childhood like? Was it where you just 0:03:39.160 --> 0:03:41.320 come from a normal family? Can you remember, you know, 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:43.560 it being just a just a normal you got You've 0:03:43.560 --> 0:03:45.400 got your brother, you got your mother, you've got your father, 0:03:45.520 --> 0:03:46.960 and everything was normal. 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:51.960 So I have very distinct memories of living in the 0:03:52.000 --> 0:03:54.360 house we were living in in Warwick, which is in 0:03:54.400 --> 0:03:57.920 the center of the UK. My father was working at 0:03:57.920 --> 0:04:01.280 Warwick Castle. We were living in a house on a 0:04:01.360 --> 0:04:04.720 street that actually was kind of under you know, ran 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:08.280 alongside the wall of the castle down to a river 0:04:08.600 --> 0:04:12.000 at the end. And I think we were having a 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:16.200 kind of relatively well to do but not wealthy, middle 0:04:16.240 --> 0:04:21.479 class existence in Warwick, in this middle sized town in 0:04:21.520 --> 0:04:24.559 the UK. I was going to school. I was learning 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:27.480 how to ride a horse. I was trying to learn 0:04:27.520 --> 0:04:29.520 how to play the violin. I don't think I was 0:04:29.600 --> 0:04:31.120 very good, but I was trying to learn how to 0:04:31.120 --> 0:04:34.839 play the violin. I had a best friend called Sarah. 0:04:35.120 --> 0:04:38.159 I had a dog called Rusty. But life, you know, 0:04:38.320 --> 0:04:42.400 was pretty normal. I don't remember feeling particularly different to 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:46.080 any other kind of little girl. At that sort of age. 0:04:46.120 --> 0:04:49.200 Your life took a drastic change. And do you remember 0:04:49.839 --> 0:04:53.240 your father coming in and telling you that you were 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:56.719 just about to embark on a on a journey of 0:04:56.760 --> 0:05:01.039 a lifetime for the good or bad, and that all 0:05:01.080 --> 0:05:03.520 of that would be a distant memory. 0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:07.440 I do remember him telling us, and I was about 0:05:07.560 --> 0:05:10.560 six at the time, and I remember it was over 0:05:10.640 --> 0:05:14.159 the kitchen table in our house in Warwick, the one 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:17.520 that I just described, and I remember him sitting there. 0:05:17.560 --> 0:05:20.240 My parents both smoked very heavily at the time. You 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:22.880 got to remember, this is the kind of nineteen seventies, 0:05:23.360 --> 0:05:25.640 So it was in kind of wreaths of smoke as 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:27.919 I remember it, and he was telling us that this 0:05:28.120 --> 0:05:31.440 was this fantastic adventure that we were going on. We 0:05:31.480 --> 0:05:34.440 were going to sail around the world. We're following Captain Cook. 0:05:35.080 --> 0:05:38.000 He presented it as a bit of a noble mission 0:05:38.279 --> 0:05:41.800 to follow Captain Cook on the two hundredth anniversary. Now 0:05:42.680 --> 0:05:46.160 kind of now, given what I know, I slightly questioned 0:05:46.200 --> 0:05:48.520 some of that story which I was given at the time. 0:05:49.000 --> 0:05:52.040 This was a big adventure. I loved my father, like 0:05:52.080 --> 0:05:53.719 a lot of the little girls. I thought he was 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:57.360 a bit of a hero. So I was worried about 0:05:57.440 --> 0:06:00.440 leaving everything behind. But he assured me we were going 0:06:00.480 --> 0:06:03.720 to be back in three years time and then everything 0:06:03.760 --> 0:06:06.080 would go back to normal. You know, my friends would 0:06:06.080 --> 0:06:09.960 be waiting for me, my dog will be there, my 0:06:10.040 --> 0:06:12.440 favorite toy, which was a doll's house, which was an 0:06:12.440 --> 0:06:15.320 old dolls house that he painted, that would be waiting 0:06:15.360 --> 0:06:17.760 for me in my grandfather's attics. So everything would go 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:18.600 back to normal. 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:21.680 And was there a sense of excitement, was You're going 0:06:21.720 --> 0:06:24.400 off on this big adventure. Obviously the man that you love, 0:06:24.480 --> 0:06:28.359 that's your father that you trust, you know explicitly, you 0:06:28.400 --> 0:06:30.800 know you're going along with it. Was there a sense 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:32.919 of excitement to go do you know what, let's go 0:06:32.960 --> 0:06:35.360 on this adventure? Or was it a case of, oh, 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:37.120 I'm not too sure about this? How did you feel 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:37.600 at the time? 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:42.680 I think it was mixed. So I was excited to 0:06:42.800 --> 0:06:45.320 be particularly was my dad, who I thought was a 0:06:45.320 --> 0:06:48.520 bit of a hero. I think I struggled ready to 0:06:48.520 --> 0:06:50.840 have a kind of concept of what this thing was about. 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:53.080 Apart from the factor it was three years of sailing, 0:06:53.080 --> 0:06:56.080 which did seem if you can imagine to a kind 0:06:56.120 --> 0:06:57.320 of six seven year old, that's. 0:06:57.200 --> 0:07:00.560 A long half your life. 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:04.719 So I think excited would be uvestating it. But it 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:08.880 was a mixture of kind of you know, I I 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:11.680 was kind of intrigued. I definitely wanted to go on it. 0:07:11.800 --> 0:07:13.560 I mean, if my father was going to go on it, 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:18.440 I didn't want to be left behind. But I was 0:07:18.680 --> 0:07:22.320 upset about leaving my friends and my dog, you know, 0:07:22.400 --> 0:07:24.480 So so it was quite a kind of mixed emotion. 0:07:25.280 --> 0:07:27.920 And how did life change for you? You know, You've 0:07:27.920 --> 0:07:31.120 got this this great life, you're living. You know, you're 0:07:31.280 --> 0:07:35.320 you're the ultimate sort of family unit. You know, one boy, 0:07:35.440 --> 0:07:39.680 one girl, mom and dad, and then your life changed. 0:07:40.040 --> 0:07:45.120 How drastically does it change? And how obvious was it 0:07:45.800 --> 0:07:46.440 at the time? 0:07:46.800 --> 0:07:50.320 It was very obvious. So there was a long period 0:07:51.160 --> 0:07:55.520 because it took about a year of preparing for this voyage, 0:07:55.760 --> 0:07:58.440 and you know, we went down to the boat as 0:07:58.600 --> 0:08:01.200 kids quite a number of so my dad was spending 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:03.920 increasingly almost all of his time down at the boat 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:06.920 preparing the boat, loading stores on the boat, getting the 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:10.400 sails for the boat, and everything else. And then we 0:08:10.440 --> 0:08:13.760 set sail, and that was almost like walking through a 0:08:13.800 --> 0:08:16.680 door into a different world because we set sail and 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:21.440 we almost immediately went into a storm. My mother immediately 0:08:21.480 --> 0:08:24.920 retreated to her cabin and disappeared for about three days. 0:08:25.920 --> 0:08:29.400 My father was up on deck steering the boat through 0:08:29.440 --> 0:08:33.200 this storm. We had three crew on board at the time, 0:08:33.240 --> 0:08:37.120 but they were basically on the wheel or sleeping. So 0:08:37.240 --> 0:08:40.000 my brother and I were seven and six and left 0:08:40.040 --> 0:08:45.280 downstairs in the main cabin basically kind of clinging on 0:08:45.280 --> 0:08:49.160 on our own for about three days. And I remember 0:08:49.200 --> 0:08:51.640 being well, first of all, I remember just trying to 0:08:51.679 --> 0:08:54.000 kind of deal with the circumstance because the cabin is 0:08:54.080 --> 0:08:57.200 kind of being thrown backwards and forwards as you're going 0:08:57.240 --> 0:09:01.800 through the wave waves. I have waves and water coming 0:09:01.840 --> 0:09:04.640 down through the main hatch, which was never very well sealed, 0:09:04.640 --> 0:09:06.600 so whenever you had a wave landing on the deck, 0:09:07.040 --> 0:09:09.400 a degree of water would come down below. So you 0:09:09.520 --> 0:09:12.439 got very I got very good, very quickly at kind 0:09:12.480 --> 0:09:14.319 of moving out of the way every time we'll kind 0:09:14.320 --> 0:09:16.480 of wave hit or kind of finding bits that were 0:09:16.520 --> 0:09:20.320 a little bit drier. And eventually I worked out there 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:22.680 wasn't going to be any food, so we started eating. 0:09:22.760 --> 0:09:25.560 We'd be given a fruit cake before we left, and 0:09:25.760 --> 0:09:28.600 we started kind of eating that. So you can imagine, 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:31.120 I mean, I will just just changed overnight. You know, 0:09:31.160 --> 0:09:34.240 We've gone from being normal little kids going to school, 0:09:34.480 --> 0:09:38.120 playing with our friends, just sitting on sitting down below, 0:09:38.520 --> 0:09:41.040 kind of clinging on it. It's kind of wet, it's 0:09:41.120 --> 0:09:45.080 kind of cold, there's no food, and my mother's disappeared. 0:09:45.280 --> 0:09:47.880 This is the boat that you're going to be living 0:09:47.880 --> 0:09:52.160 on for three years minimum, right, Okay, so just can 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:54.600 you just quickly describe the boat? What did the boat 0:09:54.640 --> 0:09:55.000 look like? 0:09:55.360 --> 0:09:58.000 So wave Walker was a very beautiful boat. 0:09:57.880 --> 0:09:59.760 The Wavewalker. That's brilliant. 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:02.400 The name of the boat, wave Walker is the name 0:10:02.400 --> 0:10:04.240 of the boat, name of the book as well. Actually, 0:10:05.320 --> 0:10:07.560 in fact, our Dingy, which is the little boat that 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:12.240 you'd take to go ashore, we named ripple Runner quite appropriately. 0:10:12.240 --> 0:10:14.040 I went for a number of them over the years, 0:10:14.360 --> 0:10:16.679 ripple Runner, one, two, three, I think we got up 0:10:16.679 --> 0:10:19.280 to about eight. But anyway, wave Walker was the name 0:10:19.280 --> 0:10:22.240 of the boat. And she was a very beautiful boat. 0:10:22.280 --> 0:10:25.280 She looked very old fashioned, with a big bowsprit, this 0:10:25.400 --> 0:10:28.080 thing at the front which kind of extends over the water, 0:10:28.559 --> 0:10:31.000 and what's called a poop deck at the back, which 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:33.280 is like a slightly raised deck like one of those 0:10:33.280 --> 0:10:37.560 old kind of galleons. She was quite long, sixty nine feet, 0:10:37.720 --> 0:10:41.160 but that includes about nine foot for this bowsprit, which 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:43.480 is basically like a kind of plank of wood at 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:48.800 the front. And she was very narrow so down below, 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:53.120 although she wasn't small and she had good headrooms you 0:10:53.160 --> 0:10:56.560 could stand up down below, there wasn't a lot of space, 0:10:56.800 --> 0:11:01.000 you know. There was only really one working bathroom. There 0:11:01.120 --> 0:11:03.520 was a second one, but it never worked. So one 0:11:03.559 --> 0:11:06.400 working bathroom, one working toilet or head as they're called 0:11:06.480 --> 0:11:10.400 on a boat. There was one little kind of sofa 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:13.880 area that you could sit on which would sit about 0:11:14.280 --> 0:11:17.520 four five people, which is where I would sit trying 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:20.760 to dodge the waves. And then my parents had a 0:11:20.920 --> 0:11:23.240 cabin at the back of the boat at the stern, 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:26.960 and my brother and I had bunks that we slept in, 0:11:28.240 --> 0:11:32.040 and over time, as we had kind of crew on board, 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:36.199 we would share cabins with the crew because you know, 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:38.840 there wasn't enough space to have your own cabin, so 0:11:38.920 --> 0:11:42.960 I never had my own cabin. It's interesting since the 0:11:43.000 --> 0:11:46.840 book came out, I've actually met relatively recently one of 0:11:46.840 --> 0:11:50.480 the people who helped to build Wavewalker before my father 0:11:50.840 --> 0:11:55.439 bought her, and he said to me, Suzanne, you need 0:11:55.440 --> 0:11:58.600 to realize this boat was never built to sail around 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:03.120 the world. This boat was built as a holiday boat, 0:12:03.360 --> 0:12:06.679 a very beautiful, almost like a kind of historic replica 0:12:07.000 --> 0:12:10.280 type boat, and she was designed to sail in waters 0:12:10.320 --> 0:12:13.839 around the UK. She was never designed to sail around 0:12:13.880 --> 0:12:14.280 the world. 0:12:14.800 --> 0:12:17.880 Wow. So it's a good job you didn't know that 0:12:17.960 --> 0:12:22.599 at the time. Now, at the time you're dodging waves, 0:12:22.720 --> 0:12:27.319 your life is literally turned upside down. Talked to me 0:12:27.360 --> 0:12:30.360 about the storm that you got into from quite quite 0:12:30.360 --> 0:12:34.520 an early stage where you ended up in a really 0:12:34.600 --> 0:12:39.400 really bad state physically and then psychologically thereafter. 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:42.679 Yes, So what happened was we set south from the 0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:47.040 UK and sailed down to South America. And just to 0:12:47.040 --> 0:12:49.120 give people a bit of context, that takes about five 0:12:49.240 --> 0:12:52.240 or six weeks at sea. It's a very long way. 0:12:52.960 --> 0:12:55.880 And after that first very difficult week which I described, 0:12:55.960 --> 0:12:59.080 actually things got a bit better. Eventually my mother reappeared 0:12:59.280 --> 0:13:02.400 after about three four days. The weather got a bit better, 0:13:03.240 --> 0:13:06.800 and we saw a whale, we saw flying fish. You know, 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:10.440 there are beautiful things about being at sea. It got 0:13:10.440 --> 0:13:12.560 pretty tricky as we had as we got close to 0:13:12.600 --> 0:13:15.360 South America because we started to run out of food, 0:13:15.400 --> 0:13:19.120 so that was tough. Then we set sail from South 0:13:19.120 --> 0:13:22.880 America to South Africa, and that was another difficult crossing, 0:13:23.080 --> 0:13:26.440 partly because we lost our compass part way through. It broke, 0:13:27.600 --> 0:13:30.319 so we were a danger of circling around and around 0:13:30.320 --> 0:13:33.920 around the South Atlantic. And I should also explain that 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:38.280 we were sailing the wrong way around the world. So 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:40.600 my father not only was he sailing a boat that 0:13:40.679 --> 0:13:42.839 was not designed to go around the world, but he'd 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:46.320 also chosen to go the most difficult way around the world. 0:13:46.720 --> 0:13:48.840 So most people who sail around the world, they sail 0:13:48.880 --> 0:13:52.319 from east to west, and if you sail east to west, 0:13:52.480 --> 0:13:54.880 you go kind of near the equator and the windsor 0:13:54.920 --> 0:13:58.559 behind you. But because my father had chosen to follow 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:01.960 Captain Cook's the void, Captain Cook went the other way. 0:14:02.120 --> 0:14:05.320 He went from west to east, and to go west 0:14:05.320 --> 0:14:07.520 to east you have to go very far south to 0:14:07.600 --> 0:14:10.800 catch the winds. So that was why we went all 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:13.280 the way down to South America and then across the 0:14:13.320 --> 0:14:17.960 Southern Atlantic Ocean to South Africa, and then we set 0:14:18.000 --> 0:14:20.360 sail across the most dangerous ocean in the world, which 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:24.840 is the Southern Indian Ocean from South Africa to Australia. 0:14:25.400 --> 0:14:29.000 And that is a huge ocean. And not only is 0:14:29.040 --> 0:14:30.880 it a huge ocean, but it's a huge ocean with 0:14:30.960 --> 0:14:33.520 almost nothing in it. I mean, it's a very very 0:14:33.840 --> 0:14:36.840 empty ocean. And I should say that by that point 0:14:36.880 --> 0:14:39.560 on board, you have myself, I'm still seven, my brother 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:42.840 who's six, my mother who's still getting very badly seasick 0:14:42.880 --> 0:14:47.200 and hate sailing. My father and my parents are falling 0:14:47.240 --> 0:14:49.720 out with all of our original crew, and the new 0:14:49.760 --> 0:14:51.880 crew are two guys who just happened to come down 0:14:51.920 --> 0:14:54.160 to the wharf just before we set sail from South 0:14:54.200 --> 0:14:57.000 Africa and they never sailed before. 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:09.320 What was the routine because like you said, you're weeks 0:15:09.320 --> 0:15:13.480 into this voyage. Now took me through the daily routine 0:15:13.760 --> 0:15:15.960 on ship? Or it would it differ every day. 0:15:16.120 --> 0:15:20.040 So I would wake up in the morning kind of 0:15:20.360 --> 0:15:23.760 crawl my way out of the bunk because on this 0:15:23.840 --> 0:15:28.000 voyage across the Southern Indian Ocean, we're in a storm 0:15:28.080 --> 0:15:31.200 almost from when we leave port. So the boat is 0:15:31.680 --> 0:15:35.880 healed over, tilted over on an extreme angle on its side, 0:15:35.960 --> 0:15:38.480 so my bunk is either way up in the air 0:15:39.360 --> 0:15:41.720 or it's way down kind of at the bottom of 0:15:41.760 --> 0:15:44.720 the cabin. So you're either climbing your way out of 0:15:44.760 --> 0:15:47.760 your bunk or you're levering yourself out of your bunk 0:15:47.760 --> 0:15:50.680 and then kind of falling across the cabin, so you 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:54.760 get out of bunk, and then making my way into 0:15:54.840 --> 0:15:57.280 the main cabin and trying to find something to eat 0:15:57.400 --> 0:16:01.080 because most of the time there were no adults, because 0:16:01.160 --> 0:16:03.560 what happens to a boat when you're sailing like that 0:16:03.800 --> 0:16:07.440 is the adults are either on the wheel or they're sleeping, 0:16:08.200 --> 0:16:10.280 you know, so, and then most of the day my 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:13.640 brother and I would hang on down below, you know, 0:16:13.720 --> 0:16:17.400 brace ourselves by the table, try to find things to do. 0:16:17.680 --> 0:16:19.960 We would make up games, you know, I had my 0:16:20.680 --> 0:16:23.200 soft toys and he had hiss and we each had 0:16:23.200 --> 0:16:25.400 a kind of kingdom and we tried to kind of 0:16:25.400 --> 0:16:28.440 make up games that we would play. But basically we're 0:16:28.480 --> 0:16:32.600 on our own most of the time. We weren't certainly 0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:35.560 on that voyage, we were barely allowed on deck because 0:16:35.560 --> 0:16:38.040 it was too dangerous. So the only time that you 0:16:38.080 --> 0:16:41.560 would see outside was when somebody would open the hatch 0:16:41.680 --> 0:16:44.240 to come down below or go back up on deck, 0:16:44.280 --> 0:16:47.280 and they would walk past, take their wet weather gear off. 0:16:47.680 --> 0:16:49.480 You would have a kind of brief conversation with them, 0:16:49.480 --> 0:16:52.840 and then that was it. So a very strange world 0:16:52.960 --> 0:16:55.120 for a little kid to live in. You know, you 0:16:55.160 --> 0:16:58.200 can't go outside, you can't run around, you can't see friends. 0:16:58.760 --> 0:17:01.960 You're basically on your own most of the time. 0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:05.120 And there was a responsibility of you. When did you 0:17:05.280 --> 0:17:08.360 really start to take care of your brother as well? 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:11.440 Was that was that later on or you know, or 0:17:11.200 --> 0:17:14.399 or did you do that from the very get go? 0:17:14.640 --> 0:17:17.440 I think from pretty early on. Actually, I mean, people 0:17:17.480 --> 0:17:19.960 talk about the fact that, you know, girls tend to 0:17:19.960 --> 0:17:23.359 be a bit more mature than boys early on, and 0:17:23.440 --> 0:17:26.800 I was a year older than him. And as I say, 0:17:26.880 --> 0:17:31.240 my mother was often kind of absent, either seasick, which 0:17:31.320 --> 0:17:33.280 she would be for the first three or four days 0:17:33.280 --> 0:17:37.160 of every voyage, so she would disappear altogether, or she 0:17:37.359 --> 0:17:40.960 was you know, taking her role in doing watches. So 0:17:41.080 --> 0:17:44.280 I was generally kind of left in a kind of 0:17:44.400 --> 0:17:49.440 quasi parental position with my brother. But we would also 0:17:49.480 --> 0:17:51.800 play together, particularly when we were in that kind of 0:17:51.840 --> 0:17:55.000 early phase, we would do less so later on when 0:17:55.000 --> 0:17:57.000 things became much more difficult on. 0:17:56.920 --> 0:17:59.920 Board and take me to now take me to the star. 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:02.680 So this is quite bad. Take me back to when 0:18:02.720 --> 0:18:07.639 you realized that it was. It was seriously bad. That 0:18:07.720 --> 0:18:10.800 something is you know, it's something you know, a state 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:13.280 of emergency basically was happening on the ship. 0:18:13.600 --> 0:18:16.399 Well, I mean, we went from what I was getting 0:18:16.480 --> 0:18:19.000 used to, which was being in a storm and the 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:22.160 boat being on a big heel and kind of going 0:18:22.240 --> 0:18:25.119 up and down through the waves, to a position where 0:18:25.480 --> 0:18:28.919 the waves outside were enormous and I now know the 0:18:28.960 --> 0:18:32.480 waves outside were thirty forty feet high and the boat 0:18:32.600 --> 0:18:36.000 was surfing down the waves and then coming up, and 0:18:36.040 --> 0:18:39.600 of course I'm experiencing this as a little kid down below, 0:18:39.720 --> 0:18:42.199 and what you can feel is the boat kind of 0:18:42.240 --> 0:18:46.080 tipping forward and then tipping backwards, and then at the 0:18:46.080 --> 0:18:49.240 top of the wave kind of keeling over and kind 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:52.919 of dropping down. And you can also see it in 0:18:52.960 --> 0:18:55.280 the kind of eyes of the kind of adults as 0:18:55.280 --> 0:18:58.639 they come downstairs. People were getting very frightened about the 0:18:58.680 --> 0:19:02.360 situation that we were in and the fear that if 0:19:02.400 --> 0:19:06.240 the boat, if we lost control of the boat, she 0:19:06.320 --> 0:19:09.719 could be flipped over by a wave. This went on 0:19:09.800 --> 0:19:13.240 for about two days, just kind of holding on basically 0:19:13.280 --> 0:19:17.320 down below. Eventually what happened was a huge wave came 0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:20.679 up behind the boat. My father has described several ways, 0:19:20.800 --> 0:19:24.640 probably combined together. They broke over the stone the back 0:19:24.680 --> 0:19:27.760 of the boat, smashed through the deck of the boat, 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:31.080 and created a huge hole in the deck above. The 0:19:31.160 --> 0:19:34.959 table went out through the side of the hole. I 0:19:35.119 --> 0:19:37.720 was standing down below at the time. My mother had 0:19:37.760 --> 0:19:40.480 just come down below and we hadn't eaten for some time, 0:19:40.640 --> 0:19:43.440 so she told me to come and help her try 0:19:43.480 --> 0:19:45.600 to get some food. So I was standing next to 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:48.199 her in the galley, and I was picked in the 0:19:48.200 --> 0:19:50.600 galley of the kitchen, and I was picked up and 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:54.520 thrown against the ceiling of the cabin, fractured my skull, 0:19:54.600 --> 0:19:57.639 broke my nose thrown against the kind of wall of 0:19:57.680 --> 0:20:00.639 the cabin, and I ended up kind of conscious on 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:04.640 the floor of the cabin. And the boat almost sank. 0:20:04.720 --> 0:20:06.879 I mean, the boat started filling up with water, because 0:20:06.920 --> 0:20:09.000 as you can imagine, you've got a big hole in 0:20:09.080 --> 0:20:12.119 the decks. Every further wave that hits the boat just 0:20:12.200 --> 0:20:15.879 kind of funnels down below, and the boat is filling 0:20:15.960 --> 0:20:19.240 up with water. I mean, I come to and I 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:21.720 find myself in a bunk. Somebody's shoved me in a 0:20:21.760 --> 0:20:24.560 bunk in one of the forward cabins, and I have 0:20:24.600 --> 0:20:28.200 a huge lump on my forehead which is growing and growing. 0:20:28.240 --> 0:20:34.320 It's extremely painful. We were incredibly lucky because we would 0:20:34.359 --> 0:20:37.080 not have stayed afloat long enough to get to Australia, 0:20:37.160 --> 0:20:39.320 and the boat was so weak we couldn't have gone 0:20:39.440 --> 0:20:41.639 We couldn't have turned around and gone back into the wind. 0:20:41.680 --> 0:20:43.639 We were too the boat was too weak to do that. 0:20:44.359 --> 0:20:47.199 We were very lucky to stumble across a tiny island 0:20:47.240 --> 0:20:49.520 called our l Amsterdam, which is in the middle of 0:20:49.560 --> 0:20:53.679 the Indian Ocean, and on that island is a small base. 0:20:54.840 --> 0:20:56.919 And I describe all of this a lot more on 0:20:56.920 --> 0:20:59.840 the book, because that base is a very mysterious place, 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:04.159 a very strange place. But it did have a little 0:21:04.200 --> 0:21:07.679 tiny doctors. It had a doctor and a little tiny 0:21:07.720 --> 0:21:10.960 surgery there. And he operated on my head and saved 0:21:10.960 --> 0:21:14.040 my life because otherwise, he told me, and I've contact 0:21:14.119 --> 0:21:16.520 I contacted him when I was writing, I would have 0:21:16.640 --> 0:21:20.000 ended up with brain damage. Yeah, I had a huge 0:21:20.080 --> 0:21:22.200 swelling on my head which he had to kind of 0:21:22.240 --> 0:21:24.439 sort out. But unfortunately he had to do that without 0:21:24.480 --> 0:21:27.800 any anesthetic, because you can imagine on a tiny island 0:21:27.800 --> 0:21:29.320 in the middle of the Indian Ocean, there was no 0:21:29.400 --> 0:21:33.680 general anesthetic. And you can't what was the island used for. Well, 0:21:33.920 --> 0:21:35.680 as I said, it's a bit of a mysterious place. 0:21:37.800 --> 0:21:38.680 I can't tell you. 0:21:39.920 --> 0:21:45.280 It has a small has a small French quasi military 0:21:45.680 --> 0:21:49.000 scientific base on it. We were told not to walk 0:21:49.040 --> 0:21:53.680 around the island without supervision. They were certainly doing lots 0:21:53.720 --> 0:21:56.760 of scientific experiments, sending up kind of weather balloons and 0:21:56.800 --> 0:22:00.160 things like that, but frankly, we weren't going to ask 0:22:00.200 --> 0:22:02.600 any questions. Had we not found the island, we would 0:22:02.600 --> 0:22:05.560 have we would have died. And I owe my life 0:22:05.640 --> 0:22:11.320 to this doctor, doctor Sennelart, who operated on me seven 0:22:11.480 --> 0:22:16.600