WILD SEAS TO GREENLAND by Rebecca Hayter

 

Rebecca Hayter has been immersed in boats and sailing since she was a child. Her father Adrian Hayter was an adventurous and solo ocean going sailor, sailing around the world single handed in the 1950s. He wrote his own book in the process, inspirational to his daughter as a writer and as a sailor. Rebecca herself then, is deeply knowledgable about boats and sailing, having done her own share of off shore sailing, and been the very successful and awarded editor of NZ Boating magazine for a number of years. But the pull of the sea is always there. In a most strange pairing of two fascinating people, Rebecca finds herself undertaking a journey, the aim being to sail the North West passage - up near Greenland - with one of NZ's most charismatic, gifted, tough and hard working sailors this country has had the good fortune to produce - Ross Field. You can google his name, and all the info and background you need to know will pop up. If I say competed in numerous Whitbread Round the World races and won his class in one of them, will that make you sit up?

I know Ross personally, and not from sailing, so it has been extra entertaining, insightful and jaw dropping to read this book and see the man, the legend, or as Rebecca calls him the old war horse, in his natural environment, at one with the elements, the boat. It sounds cliched, but it will leave you with a sense of wonder, especially if like me you know very little about sailing. This could well put one off reading such a book, and yes there is plenty of technical stuff, sailing jargon, boat parts, weather words, an endless variety and number of sails, with equally endless names. But I just glossed over much of that, because all it told me was how fastidious Ross was in his planning and preparation and I never felt bogged down in it. Which of course is the talent of the writer, to give you just enough to let you know this is important stuff, but not enough to bore the brain out of you.

So the journey. There is nothing on earth that would make me get on a yacht and do a trip like this, to about as close to the North Pole as you can get with the ever present threat of icebergs, storms, polar bears, the cold, the tedium of it all, let alone being in a confined space with Ross Field for so many days. But the writer does. This is an opportunity she may never get again. She admits she is scared, but she has 100%+ trust in Ross, and the journey is navigated and sailed without any mishaps. As with anything successful, it is all in the preparation - the outfitting of the yacht Rosemary, sorting food, clothing, wet/ice weather gear, the technical mastery of navigation, weather, radar which is done with Ross' son Campbell based in Lymington. And then the journey itself - leaving Lymington, the Irish Sea, getting to Greenland, sailing through the fjords, the North West passage not panning out as planned.  But I don't really detect too much disappointment about this as the whole trip, even as a reader is truly amazing. What it must have been like to experience the rawness and untouched beauty of this region.  The landscape is beautiful, bleak, white, icy, cold, sparsely populated, hard to live in, where in the middle of summer it never gets dark. How disorienting would that be day after day. Rebecca is an outstanding writer, bringing all this to life, and the photos - so many photos - in this unusual 24 hour light. 

As well as being a 'diary' of her journey, this book is a homage to Ross, his extraordinary talents and intense love for what he is doing. In turn she is also honouring her own father, who although he never did this particular journey, he did do two huge ocean going journeys. This book is sprinkled with quotes from her father's writing, Rebecca being the link, the conjoint between these two mercurial, talented and tough men. I loved this, I surprised myself how much I liked it, Ross's daughter telling me to read it. Sailing and water sports are not really my thing, but this is just terrific, increasing my respect for people like Rebecca and Ross who take the world by the horns and give it a jolly good shake.