Thomas Thor Tangvald was born at sea on his father’s boat, L’Artemis de Pytheas. It was 1976, by which time Thomas’s father Peter Tangvald was already a seasoned, competent sailor, having completed a five-year round-the-world voyage on an earlier boat, Dorothea, a 32ft cutter, with no motor, electricity or transmitter.
For Thomas, his life on the ocean, and less so on land, was a dichotomy of restrictions and freedoms. Sometimes gruelling, sometimes exhilarating and often brutal. By the age of 15, Thomas had witnessed the deaths of his mother, his stepmother and his father and half-sister.
My path collided with Thomas’s when we arrived at Leeds University in September 1994. Both aged 18, we seemingly had much in common. We had a love of languages, a love of sailing, and
