In December 2025 a consultant sat me down and told me I had stage 3 cancer. I'm 36. A dad to George and Olive. One moment I was getting on with life; the next, everything felt uncertain. There was fear and worry, and also the strange work of putting on a brave face for the kids, for family, for myself, while my head tried to catch up with what I'd just heard.

On the 18th of February I started an intense course of chemotherapy: Escalated BEACOPDAC. I decided to tackle it head-on. That doesn't mean it was easy. It meant showing up for every cycle, even on the days when showing up was the only win.

Treatment thinned my immune system, so I had to isolate, kept away from ordinary life just when I most needed people. I shaved my head and had to process seeing myself like that in the mirror. There were real bad days: days I couldn't get out of bed, days when the future felt like a rumour.

I've been into sailing since I was little, out on the water with my grandad. A solo Atlantic crossing has always played on my mind. In those dark moments it stopped feeling like a distant “one day” and started feeling like the right challenge: take something as heavy as cancer and turn it into something positive. Prove, to myself and to the kids, that when you put your mind to it, anything is possible, no matter the hardship.

So I picked a date. I told people. I planned the crossing in my small boat, Songline, a Sigma 33. The GoFundMe, the kit lists, the route: a lot of that was sketched when I felt at my worst, because looking forward was how I got through. Then came the news I'd been waiting for: remission, ringing the bell, treatment done. Being able to actually go and do it feels like an extraordinary gift.

George is six and Olive is four. They won't remember most of this year, and I'm glad. What I hope they'll have instead is a story about their dad, the boat, the ocean, and the simple idea that you can take a negative and turn it into something worth having if you set your mind to it. Strength isn't the absence of fear. It's deciding to keep going anyway, and showing them (and Tam, who's held so much of this with me) that a bad year doesn't get to write the ending. If the crossing also raises money for charities that matter and gives hope to someone else in a chemo chair, then it already means more than the miles.