Eve Stanway's earliest memories are not of a stable home, but of the narrow, damp bunk she slept in as a child, surrounded by the smell of salt and wet canvas. Her bed was on the port side of a 30-foot oceanic catamaran, a vessel that was her family's only home for the first eleven years of her life.
A Childhood Guided by the Horizon
Her parents, who had been living in a single rented room in London, bought the boat in the 1970s when Eve was just six months old. With no prior sailing experience, they embarked on a life of freedom, learning to operate the catamaran as they travelled. The family journeyed to Italy, where Eve's brother was born, later crossing the Atlantic and rounding the formidable Cape Horn.
For Eve, this meant a childhood of remarkable experiences. She witnessed phosphorescent tides in the Bay of Biscay and watched dolphins dance beneath the hulls. She learned to sail and steer an outboard motor long before she mastered long division. She developed profound resourcefulness, reading wedged against a bulkhead and learning to mend a dinghy.
The Hidden Cost of Constant Motion
Yet this extraordinary upbringing came with a significant personal cost. Eve had no postcode, no front door, and no permanent education. Her family would only stay in one place long enough for her to attend the nearest school—sometimes for a term, sometimes just weeks—before setting sail again.
She changed schools at least a dozen times, often arriving mid-term with no uniform, no friends, and no understanding of the rules. Knowledge was pieced together from library books read by lamplight, leading to significant gaps she was too frightened to reveal. Her sun-bleached hair and salt-stiff skin marked her as different, making friendship a fleeting concept. "Friendship always meant loss anyway," she recalls.
What she craved was stability: a still bedroom, a made bed, and the simple rhythm of ordinary life with birthday parties and the same friends year after year. The adults who told her she was lucky saw only adventure; she felt profoundly unmoored.
Building a Harbour in Adulthood
The family settled back on land when Eve was twelve, but the emotional longing for roots persisted. She made deliberate choices to build the safety she yearned for: attending university, securing a job at a law firm, and establishing a steady home in London.
A pivotal moment came in her thirties. Walking home from work in a sharp suit, she passed a group of teenagers and realised they saw a confident adult, not the scared child she once was. She had finally constructed the stable harbour her nomadic childhood lacked.
Now a parent herself, Eve has complicated feelings about her own upbringing. While she admires her parents' courage, she feels they gave her the world but not the tools to navigate it. With her own children, she strives for balance—offering small doses of adventure and wonder, but always within a framework of stability, choice, and a home where their voices matter.
Her story is a poignant reminder for the modern families she sees online, chasing idyllic nomadic lifestyles. The photographs show turquoise waters, but rarely the loneliness of constant goodbyes. Children need wonder and wide horizons, but they also need a place to return to—a harbour to hold their stories, not just their survival.
