The one thing you can't fully control in a ship is the water all around you, so part of your plan is always reading and analysing the currents and the tides. You have a clear image in your head of how you think the ship will perform in the prevailing conditions. But this time something isn't going the way we had planned it ...'

As a farmer's daughter in the country's largest landlocked county, Marie Gleeson's unusual career choice took her into uncharted waters. Working her way up from gruelling bootcamp training to leading a drug interdiction operation seizing €700 million of cocaine from a yacht off the Kerry coast, she was a leader among men and rose to every challenge. Developing a love of the sea, Gleeson learned that to be at one with it required agility, and a willingness to change, to go with the wind – not against it. These lessons prepared her for operating without a life raft when her personal life threw her the greatest challenge of all ...