Boating New Zealand — January 2018

128 Boating New Zealand

or the first half of his life David Lewis walked

the well-worn path of conformity and duty.

It was medical school, WWII, marriage,

and children. Apart from climbing the odd

mountain or a cross-country canoe trip, his

life had predictability to it.

In his early 40s Lewis found himself working as a General

Practitioner in London’s East End. “I was becoming increasingly

out of tune with my patients’ outlook. Their aspirations,

particularly those of the young couples, were extraordinarily

limited and unadventurous. Fears of illness, insecurity, and

apparently the sky falling down obsessed them.”

Confronted with this wall of conservatism and with a

marriage in the last stages of failure, something snapped and

the overwhelming desire for adventure rushed into his life with

all the force of an incoming tide.

In 1960 he tossed it all in for a half-baked idea to race solo

across the Atlantic, 3,100 nautical miles from Plymouth to

Newport, Rhode Island. With his life savings he purchased

Cardinal Vertue – a 25-foot Laurent Giles design – and set out

with other pioneers on what would be the first single-handed

Atlantic race. It was an epic test for his adventurous resolve as it

took 56 days, a dismasting, grounding and several collisions to

get him there.

At the end of it all he turned around and sailed back to

England before writing his first book The Ship That Would

Not Travel Due West. His writing style was very readable and

embarrassingly honest with regard to his own shortcomings.

Perhaps because of this point the book was a great success. It

was also to set a pattern of adventuring and writing about it all

that would dominate the rest of his life.

After his trans-Atlantic race Lewis briefly returned to shore

life. As a doctor his bedside manner was unusual – sometimes

he would advise a patient to “see a proper doctor.” It did not

bode well for his career, so when he decided to go adventuring

with his second wife, Fiona, and two small daughters, he built

the ocean-cruising catamaran Rehu Moana and cut his ties to the

medical profession.

F

BREAKING

THE MOULD

feature

Sailor

Scribes

WORDS BY MATT VANCE

PHOTOGRAPHY SUPPLIED

It’s never too late to embrace life – especially if a boat’s involved.