Shapes on the Wind - Autobiography of David Lewis 1917 - 2002

Until his death in October 2002, it seemed nothing could stop David Lewis. His had been a truly remarkable life, all the more for it was only in his mid-forties that he decided to pack in his job as a doctor in the East End of London and set sail with his first two kids and second wife on the first multihull circumnavigation of the globe, an incredible journey of 38,000 miles. In the late 1960s, Lewis's adventuring took on a scientific focus with a groundbreaking crossing of the 1600 miles between Tahiti and New Zealand using only the 'star-path' techniques of the traditional Polynesian navigators. His accomplishment shook conventional wisdom about the settlement of the Pacific to its very core. Later, he would undertake similar ventures in the Arctic realms of the Soviet Far East and Alaska, and in the Central Australian deserts. But it was in the 1970s and early 1980s that Lewis really made his mark in the world of adventure with his expeditions to Antarctica. First there was the dramatic 'Ice Bird' voyage, the first-ever single-handed voyage to the Antarctic in a yacht, in which Leis barely made it to the frozen continent alive; then came the eight-person Solo Expedition mounted by his own Oceanic Research Foundation; and, last of all, the six-person Explorer Expedition. Even in his eighties Lewis showed few signs of slowing down. Poor hearing and eyesight were no impediment to his adventuring, a point he proves so eloquently in a brand new chapter for this updated edition of his autobiography. Written just months before he passed away, it reveals the indomitable spirit for which he was so loved and admired, and is a fitting endnote to a story that seemed to have no ending.