Shapes on the Wind

This is the first of this authors books that I have read, and it is his autobiography - published just two years before his death at eighty five years old.

David Lewis was many things in his life - not least a doctor, a navigator and a sailor. He lived an incredibly varied life, scattering wives and women across the world (he was seldom without female accompaniment), but certainly played a role in the saving of the traditional Polynesian navigation techniques which had fallen from favour of the converted Christian peoples. In most Polynesian counties the church discouraged, if not banned the teaching of these methods as being backward.
David Lewis spent a long time travelling the Pacific, spending time and taking voyages with the old men, learning their ways. Thankfully, before it was too late the people once again began to teach their young men their traditional methods using the stars, the sun, the tides and the birds.

As well as his experience in traditional navigation, Lewis played a part in Antarctic history, making a number of voyages there in his life - the best known being in Ice Bird, when he made the first single-handed voyage to Antarctica in a yacht.

His voyages are too numerous to outline in a short review, there are chapter after chapter of them. He also spent time in the Arctic, living for a year in the north of Russia with the natives in Chukotka.

Throughout the whole book, Davis Lewis discusses frankly his philosophy of ageing. Perhaps not as gracefully as he thinks, he openly discusses his many relationships and marriages, and is quick to take the blame for their repeated failures. He certainly had an adventurous spirit, was overly ambitious and refused to give up in all but the most impossible situations.

It is a very entertaining read for a varied audience. There is a huge amount of sailing discussed, but there is no requirement to know even the basics to stay involved in the writing - it is probably the most non-technical sailing book I have read (I have next to no technical knowledge of sailing).

Four stars out of five for me.