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ABOVE LEFT
Cardinal Vertue in
1960.
TOP Lewis on
Cardinal Vertue.
ABOVE With his
family on Rehu
Moana.
LEFT Lewis at 17
after canoeing
from Whanganui
to Auckland.After a fairly disastrous maiden voyage towards Greenland
in the catamaran, he entered the 1964 single-handed trans-
Atlantic race, then picked up his family in the United States,
and set off to circumnavigate the world by way of the Magellan
Straits, the South Pacific and the Cape of Good Hope.
Lewis had always been interested in the old navigational
methods used to explore and populate the Pacific, and used
what was then known by Europeans of these techniques to
complete the Tahiti-New Zealand leg of the voyage without
using a compass, sextant or chronometer.
Two more good books and another failing marriage were
the result. Most significantly this voyage opened a new chapter
in his life as he dedicated himself to studying the ancient
Polynesian navigation techniques.
Back in England, after completing the first circumnavigation
by a multihull, Lewis sold Rehu Moana and in 1967 bought Isbjorn,
a ketch-rigged fishing boat. With a research grant from the
Australian National University and with his family as crew, he set
out for the Pacific again to study traditional navigation techniques.My errors have been
not of passivity, but of
commission, of doing,
of daring to undertake
fresh ventures.