Hellen Tew,always wanted to sail,she did eventualy,then wrote a book about it but sadly passed away before her story was published.
HELEN TEW sits at the helm of a very small yacht after a very long voyage from the Solent to the Caribbean, explaining why one should never give up on a lifetime's dream. A few weeks ago, she fulfilled hers by sailing across the Atlantic. And then, here at the harbour on the island of St Martin, she celebrated her 89th birthday.
Helen Tew:'I have lived, really, for sailing and the sea'
It is simply never too late to do the things you've always wanted to do, she says, with a twinkle in her eye. "I am tickled pink. To be here, on this boat, has been my ambition for 70 years. You must never, ever give up. You must always look forward to something."
Her journey may well be record-breaking - the oldest woman, perhaps, in the smallest boat to cross the Atlantic: Guinness is looking into it - but Tew, who has five sons and 11 grandchildren, really does not care. The trip has far more significance for her than that: she set sail to keep a promise made to her husband - and to settle a score with the other significant man in her life, her father.
In 1934, Tew's father, Commander Douglas Graham of the Royal Navy, planned his own crossing of the Atlantic in a small boat. This was a bold adventure, considered outlandishly dangerous at the time, and his daughter Helen, in her early twenties, wanted desperately to go with him.
Father and daughter had been sailing together all her life, and Tew had already accompanied him on an earlier journey, north to the Faroes. He had promised that she could come on the Atlantic voyage but, in the end, decided that the crossing would be too much of a risk to his daughter's life.
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