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This is Later with Lee Matthews the
Lee Matthews Podcast more what You Hear Weekday

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Afternoon's on the Drive. When Susanne
Heywood was seven, she set sail out

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of Plymouth, England in the schooner
Wavewalker with her parents and brother. The

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trip was to recreate Captain Cook's third
voyage around the world, and it was

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supposed to last three years. It
lasted considerably longer, and she's written all

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about it in her new book it's
called wave Walker, and she's joining us

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now. Please, Suzanne, please
tell me your dad at least had novice

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sailing skills. He did have novice
sailing skills. He had sailed quite a

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lot around the UK, but he'd
never crossed the ocean before, so he

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didn't really know how to kind of
navigate across the no ocean. But the

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bigger issue actually was that my mother
who went with us. So it was

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my father, my mother, my
younger brother and me. My mother hated

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sailing and became very, very badly
seasick and that kind of created quite a

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difficult dynamic on the boat, as
you can imagine, I imagine. So,

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and this was also at a time, wasn't it before GPS and satellite

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phones. That's right. I mean, conditions on board were very basic.

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We sit there when I was seven
years old, I mean on the boat.

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Basically the only technology that we had
was we had a sextant, which

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my father had never kind of used
crossing an ocean before. We had a

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compass, and we had an ice
box, which literally was a kind of

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box with kind of a you know, kind of pads pads around it so

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that the ice would melt rather slowly. But we didn't have a refrigerator.

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We had no satellite navigation. We
had a shortwave radio, but that only

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kind of worked when you were very
close to the coast. So once we

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left a port pretty quickly, we
were completely out of contact with anybody.

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Was your father just that type of
person that he just would spur the moment

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to, very impulsive kind of guy. Well, he was somebody who wanted

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to be a hero. I think
now my maiden name is Cook. And

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so what he wanted to do is
he wanted to recreate Captain Cook's third voyage

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around the world. And that was
the whole pretext of this voyage, and

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incidentally how he raised the money for
the Boycher because we weren't kind of wealthy

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people, so he raised money that
way. I think he wanted to be

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a hero, be celebrated for doing
this. And what he promised me,

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as you said in your introduction,
was that I, you know, it

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was only going to take three years. I'd be back by the time I

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was ten years old. I was
going to leave obviously my entire life behind,

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my beloved dog, Rusty, my
friends, my doll's house, which

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was going to go into my grandfather's
attic. But not to worry. We

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were going to be back by the
time I was ten, and everything would

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go back to normal. And it
was considerably long. It was indeed,

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it was indeed, I mean,
and that really is the kind of tale

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of the book, because this gradually
unravels over time. You know, first

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of all, we're very badly shipwrecked
early on in the voyage, about six

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months in. I'm very badly injured
in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

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Because we're also sailing a very dangerous
route around the world, because we're following

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Captain Cook on his third voyage.
We're actually sailing the wrong way around the

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world, across some of the most
dangerous oceans with two little kids on board.

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I'm seven and my brother six.
I'm very badly injured, so as

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you can imagine, that leads me
to quite a fear of the sea.

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But my father is determined to keep
sailing. We keep on sailing all the

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way up to Hawaii, which is
where we stay for a little while.

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Well, my father decides what to
do next, and then we have a

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family vote, and I vote to
come home, because of course, by

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this time, I'm desperate to go
to school. I'm desperate to have friends.

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And my father overrules my brother and
me and says, you know,

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this is a dictatorship, not the
democracy, and we're going to keep sailing.

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And so we did. We just
kept sailing. Suzanne Hayward the book

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is wave Walker, Breaking Free.
It's about her adventure around the world sailing

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as a child with her family.
I'm a sailing enthusiast and I haven't done

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this, but I know people who
have and something similar, and much of

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the time they sail in a group
as close as possible, relaying information to

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one another, and only at certain
times of the year when the possibility for

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storms is low. Did any of
that occur to her parents, No,

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we didn't do any of that.
No, we sailed completely on our own.

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We were sailing the wrong way around
the world. And although we would

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stay for a few months occasionally in
Australia or New Zealand during the cyclone season,

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often my father would sail before the
cyclone season was over, and we

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did hit several cyclones while we were
sailing. But I became determined I was

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going to escape from this world.
I mean, as the years roll by,

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and I ended up being on the
spot for almost a decade. Years

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grow by, I was getting older, I'm a girl becoming a teenager on

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this boat. My relationship with my
mother is deteriorating. There's only one bathroom

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on the boat. We have lots
of crew on board. It's a very

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difficult environment. They're expecting me to
work on the boat because these crew are

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basically paying for us to keep sailing, so they have to be kind of

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cooked and cleaned for I decide I'm
going to study and education is going to

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be my way form of escape from
this boat. I was about to ask

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if you did have to be on
watch at the tender age that you were.

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Yes. No, I had to
do watches from quite early on and

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They're very difficult, really because you
can't you can't read, you can't do

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anything. You basically have to stand
up on deck looking out. And you

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know what I found. And particularly
as the kind of years went by and

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I started trying to study, I
tried to teach myself by correspondence, by

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post. I was trying to do
that. I was trying to work for

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five six hours a day kind of
cooking and cleaning, which is what my

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parents wanted. And I'm afraid they
had a very gender view, so that

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was expected of me and not of
my brother. And then I was doing

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my watches, so it was incredibly
kind of tiring. I mean I had

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no time to kind of do all
the normal things that you would expect that

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you do as a teenager. So
Zan Hayward and Haywood and the name of

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the book is it's all about her
sailing experience as wavewalker, Breaking Free available

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everywhere you get books. One would
look at this and think this was a

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form of child abuse. Well you
could do. I mean, it's very

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interesting. I kind of did a
course on that at one point, and

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many of the things have happened.
I like that. But the interesting thing

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is when it happens to you as
a child, you're incredibly forgiving of your

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parents. But that never occurred to
me as a child. I just accepted

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that this was the world that I
was in. I assumed, and I

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think you have to assume when you
were a child that my parents were good

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and they wanted the kind of best
for me. And frankly, it was

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only when I became a parent myself, and I'm now the parent of three

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children, and who are kind of
in their early twenties, so they've gone

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right through this kind of age period. Then actually I looked back and I

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realized that, you know, the
way in which I'd been treated really wasn't

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acceptable. You know, kind of
looking at it through a mother's eyes,

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I think is very different than looking
at it as a child. Oh no,

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I've done that many times, looking
back at with my middle aged brain,

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looking back at certain things my father
and grandfather did, and I came

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to these realizations that I didn't as
a child. Of course, that's right.

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I think as a child you have
to forgive your parents. You have

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to assume that it's all okay.
But what I did know was I had

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no intention of being trapped on that
boat forever. You know, I write

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in the book about feeling and I
felt like this as a child, that

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I was trapped in my father's dream. My father's dream was to sell around

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the world. He loved the freedom
of it. He loved the fact that

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every time he fell out with somebody, he could pull up the anchor and

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keep sailing. But his freedom was
effectively my imprisonment because I could I mean

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lots of time, I couldn't even
get off this boat. I mean I

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was truly trapped on the boat,
couldn't even go ashore. I knew I

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wanted to escape from that. I
didn't want to live my life inside somebody

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else's dream. And that's why I
decided I had to educate myself. I

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could see no other way to get
off this boat than to do that.

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So Zaan Haywood. And the name
of the book is it the same name

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as the schooner. She was a
board wave walker breaking free. Did your

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father ever master the trigonometry necessary to
use the sextant? He did, Indeed,

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he became very very good at using
the sextent. So yes, and

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over time we got a little bit
more equipment on the boat, but the

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boat became very tired over time and
increasingly crowded, so conditions on board actually

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deteriorated as we went on. But
my father became a very good navigator.

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And when you'd come into a port
of call, would you have to to

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I mean, how did you make
your means? Did you have to at

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times get a job on shore to
make a little money? I mean the

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money must have started to run out
from time to time. Well, we

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never had a lot of money,
and after we were shipwrecked in the Indian

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Ocean, basically any money that my
parents had was spent repairing the boat.

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So what they started to do was
to take paying crew on board. So

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they effectively turned this boat into a
bit of a floating hotel. And that's

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why I had to work, you
know, four or five six hours a

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day cooking and cleaning, because on
this boat we would have you know,

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five six, seven eight crew and
that's how they earned money. So I

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was effectively kind of working for them
to keep this endless voyage going. It

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does eventually end, and you can
read all about it in wave Walker Breaking

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Free, Suzanne Haywood. It's an
incredible story and a great page turner,

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and I thank you for bringing it
to us. Thank you very much,

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wonderful to talk to keep the day. Thanks for listening to Later with Lee

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Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast,
and remember to listen to The Drive Live

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weekday afternoons from five to seven.
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