Brought up in Bristol in the 1970s, Cockwell was “boat mad” from a very young age. His father bought and worked on an old lifeboat, assisted by his very willing son, whenever he was home on leave from his construction job in Saudi Arabia.

From the age of seven, Cockwell drove a dinghy with a Seagull outboard around Bristol docks, towing wrecks to the community hand crane for pocket money. At age 11 he was given his first yacht, a 17’drop-keeler. He fixed it up and was soon sailing single-handed up and down the Bristol Channel a notoriously dangerous stretch of water with dramatic tides and a huge swell rolling in from the Atlantic.

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