W hen I was eight, my dad retired and we moved from Goostrey, near Wilmslow, in Cheshire, to Cornwall. My parents loved sailing and had plenty of sailing friends; we had a small family cruiser, so Cornwall was the perfect place. I was used to Cheshire, so the scenery around our new house couldn’t have been more different. The views over the Fal estuary were stunning.

Delta Cottage, now a holiday rental, is perched on the cliff above a creek. We think it was built about 200 years ago as a fisherman’s cottage. Previous owners had done alterations, so by the time we moved in, there was a kind of conservatory built onto the ground floor. We had three small bedrooms — I had a bunk bed in mine, with a built-in desk underneath — and the tiniest bathroom you can imagine. Somehow, my parents made it all work, and living there was good training: for someone destined to spend time on small boats, it was fantastic preparation for compact living.

When we moved into the cottage, Dad had a 10-year plan for renovations. The kitchen had an old-fashioned range, and his first job was to modernise the room and open up the utility room, to maximise living space. He is good with his hands, but it took a year to finish.

I went to school in Truro, a 12-mile commute each way, so I had to get up early. The road to our house comes down the side of the hill to the beach, and Mum or Dad would drive me the four miles to the bus stop. We probably should have had a 4WD, which would have coped better with the high tides, when you couldn’t drive across the half-mile of beach. Our Fords only lasted between three and four years before the bottoms fell out because of the rust.

There may not have been much room in our house, but it was a wonderful home and we had lots of visitors: at a party for my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary, there were 12 overnight guests. Summer was the best time, as there was so much more to do. I loved to play cricket in our garden, but we were on a cliff, so I spent a lot of time scrambling down to retrieve balls that had gone through the hedge. I was also happy just to look out to the water, sitting there for hours, dreaming about all things nautical.

From the age of 10, I was given a great deal of freedom. Mum and Dad pointed out the safety issues, then trusted me to sail off in the dinghy by myself. I didn’t have many local friends; although there were a dozen houses in the area, most of the families had much older children. The dinghy was fantastic, as I could take myself off to the beach and go to the sailing club. I was completely independent.

For a boy like me, completely besotted with sailing, Delta Cottage was the perfect house. Life wasn’t so easy for my mum, though, and there were times when it must have been frustrating for her. When you ran out of onions or milk, the local shop was three miles away — and if the tide was in, you couldn’t get there at all. Somehow, my parents sorted out the logistics of keeping us all fed, especially in winter, when the weather was wild and sometimes the power went out. We were so remote, it could take days for an engineer to come. When there was a gale, the waves would crash against the rocks and the spray splashed the kitchen windows. It wasn’t good for the exterior paintwork, which often had to be redone.

The house felt quite damp in winter. Fortunately, Cornwall doesn’t have many freezing winters, so it was never very cold, except for one wonderful Christmas when it snowed so heavily that it was impossible to get a car up the hill for three days. Living in such a special environment, you learn to be self-sufficient — and to keep a good supply of candles.

About half a mile up the track from Delta Cottage is the Pandora Inn. It’s a bit of a tourist attraction, and cars that were heading there were always driving up to our cottage, having got completely lost. I’m sure Mum was tempted to ask Dad to put up a large notice saying, “This is not the Pandora Inn.”

In 1993, my parents sold up and bought a house on the Helford River, about 25 miles away. Five years later, we rented Delta Cottage for the Christmas holidays. We’d left all our furniture, which was a bit more worn out, but otherwise not much had changed. It felt just like home.

Close to the Wind: The Autobiography of Britain’s Greatest Olympic Sailor is published by Vintage at £18.99 Interview by Sue Fox