David Lewis: Shapes On The Wind

HarperCollins

$29.95

Review: Margie Thomson*

In these couch-bound times, it's wonderful to read stories like that of David Lewis, one of New Zealand's most famous sailors and adventurers.

Now in his 80s, this is his autobiography, and what a life it has been (and still is: just last year he set off to sail to the Solomon Islands, having to abandon his yacht Taniwha when it foundered on Great Barrier Island).

He is the only surviving participant in the First Solo Transatlantic Yacht Race, and since the 1960s has circumnavigated the globe, often with wife and children, undertaking work (as mountaineer, anthropologist, scientist, doctor, leper-colony worker, political activist) in far-flung places.

A famous navigator, he followed the star-path techniques of the traditional Polynesian navigators to sail the 1600 miles between Tahiti and New Zealand, shaking conventional wisdom about the settlement of the Pacific, but he is perhaps best-known for his trips to the Antarctic.

He was the first person to single-handedly voyage to Antarctica in a yacht, and later, through his Oceanic Research Foundation, he led two further expedition teams there.

Lewis writes with charming frankness about the deliberate challenges he set himself, each adventure being as much against himself as against the physical challenges of nature.

In overcoming his own fear and limitations he exhibits his true heroism.

When he describes, in his introduction, the challenge of ageing we can be sure that he will set as vivacious an example in his last decades as he has in previous ones.

* Margie Thomson is the Herald deputy books editor.