54 Breeze Magazine
A must-have tale of high latitude Arctic adventure • Wild Seas to Greenland, by Rebecca Hayter, published by Oceanspirit Publishing, 2021, is on sale at the RNZYS Retail Store. In 2017, Whitbread Round the World Race winner Ross Field made an attempt at the notorious Northwest Passage with a sturdy, French aluminium cruising yacht. It was a far cry from the lightweight racing machines in which he had carved an international ocean racing career. Entering harbours, it made such an intimidating impression that other yachts scrambled to get out of the way and sales of fenders soared. The yacht called Rosemary made it to Greenland, final stepping off point for the Northwest Passage attempt. However, faced with unreliable compasses and the prospect of having to handsteer through hazardous, icy high-latitudes, Field called the expedition off and returned to Ireland.
Journalist and author Rebecca Hayter crewed aboard Rosemary and has produced a self-published account of the voyage. Arctic passagemaking is serious business and anybody would be proud to include Greenland on their sailing CV. But, at first glance an expedition that fails to achieve its purpose, in which nobody suffers life-threatening injuries, there are no mid-ocean capsizes, or boat-crushing encounters with ice, might seem unpromising material for a book. Everyone gets home safely. It is testament to Hayter’s writing skill that in Wild Seas to Greenland: A Sailing Adventure with Ocean Racer Ross Field she has nevertheless woven a spellbinding story of seafaring adventure with a “warhorse of the seas”. The fact that there were no major disasters,
that problems and challenges were overcome or avoided through good seamanship, careful weather-routing and sound decision-making is the story. There are lessons here that anybody contemplating offshore passage-making would do well to absorb, particularly in relation to weather strategies. Be assured, though, this is no dry, how-to manual. Written with a light touch, it is full of humour, honesty, fear, insight, contemplation, spirituality, yoga, even recipes – and occasional moments of sheer poetry that stop you in your tracks. “Fish guts and diesel smell like love and integrity to me,” for example, as part of an evocative description of the scruffy anchorage at Nuuk. How she and Field get on as crewmates is peppered with hilarious incidents, minor crises and mishaps. Extracts from Field’s own emails and Facebook posts add to the texture of the narrative. Another constant voice is of Hayter’s father, Adrian, who sailed single-handed from England to New Zealand in 1949. Passages from his book Sheila in the Wind introduce each chapter. His daughter has produced a book of which he would have been proud.
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Ivor Wilkins
