Adventurer's daughter speaks out - 'HE PUT ALL OUR LIVES IN DANGER'

Life on board Wavewalker was scary and then she was abandoned

-  Fleur Guthrie

One morning over breakfast, Suzanne Heywood's Yorkshireman father announced their family would soon be leaving the UK. He wanted to spend the next three years sailing round the world, recreating Captain Cook's third voyage.

But what was pitched to the then-six-year-old as "the adventure of a lifetime" actually became her 12-year nightmare.

After sailing through storms one so brutal that Suzanne's skull was smashed when their boat Wavewalker was overturned- she describes growing up deprived of safety, friendships, schooling and occasionally drinking water.

For months at a time, no one knew where they were. Suzanne was eventually abandoned in New Zealand as a 16-year-old, with her younger brother Jon, while her parents continued sailing in Fiji.

The years of neglect infused deep emotional scars. Now aged 54, the former civil servant has penned her memoir of a jaw-dropping childhood at sea, drawing on detailed diaries she wrote at the time.

As she chats to the Weekly over Zoom from her home in London, Suzanne likens her "traumatic" upbringing to Stockholm syndrome. She didn't really want to admit it to others for decades and made many excuses for her parents, Gordon and Mary Cook.

"I knew that as soon as I started to write my book, I would jeopardise my relationship with my parents," she admits candidly.

"So I put it off. I had a superficial relationship with them, which was based on 'as long as we don't talk about the past and I don't criticise anything', it was fine.

"But I don't consider mine to be a 'victim' story," she points out. "It's a survivor story. Looking back, I think, 'Good on you - you got out!"