yachtsman philosopher

Musings of a lone-handed yachtsman philosopher

To be a cruising yachtsman, lone-handed, must require one to be part-philosopher. This side of Adrian Hayter emerges strongly in his second book, Business in Great Waters.

HAYTER is a New Zealander whose adventures in his first voyage from the Dominion to the United Kingdom, via Suez, were told in Sheila in the Wind. This second book completes his voyage (in another boat, Norwegian-built Valkyr), from the United Kingdom back to NZ via Panama and the Pacific.

As his publishers hopefully remark, the discipline of such a voyage is a great clarifier of both mind and spirit and Hayter’s philosophy of life and his views on contemporary politics account for the better part of the book. Those who expect a rollicking seafaring yarn had therefore better be warned.

There is, of course, considerable information on his efforts to find a boat in the UK, to finance the voyage and of subsequent battles with calms, hurricanes and the business of getting a small 25 ft clinker-built yacht half-way round the world alone. But it is in a minor key.

"Something" Drives Him

Largely he is interested in the present state of the world and his own reaction to it —the “something” that drives him on to pit himself against the forces outside the orbit of everyday life. If, to the every-day person, he emerges as a cross between a practical deep-sea yachtsman and some species of nut, one feels that he, himself, would be the first to ponder on the significance of it.

His own description of the night following his arrival in Panama probably gives as good a pen-portrait as any of the unusual character that is Adrian Hayter.

“That evening,” he says, “I showered and changed into clean clothes and had a meal at the club costing four times as much as a meal on board. I sat alone at a small table covered by a white cloth, served by a slim, high-breasted negress with a friendly smile and all the clutter was cleared away and washed up by someone else. After a long period at sea . . . the ordinary everyday things which we normally take for granted become wondrous gifts.”

He then muses on an incident of

a few days before when, crossing th« Gulf of Mexico, a flock of swallow.* take refuge on the Valkyr then flj away leaving one of them, who coulc not make the distance, dead in hi; hand: The dead bird’s companion! had “flown away from the safety anc comfort of my ship, impelled to some compulsive urge they could no" resist”.

Back in the dining room othej diners were enjoying themselves “unaware of anything else, and i made me wonder again whether I was not mad to tear myself away fron this warmth and comfort and gc out again into the darkness and we and squalls. But I knew, too, tha deep down, underlying, embracing all, it was vital and inexorable anc would soon take hold again; anc remembering what the diners die not know I prayed that it would nevei leave me, whatever it cost”.

Later he went into the bar for i couple of quiet beers and to reac the local newspaper but the Ameri cans terrified of “silence and solitude’ never left him alone for long. “Mj own inclination to speak only wher I have something I really want tc

, which is not often, and to eat ne in preference to making a ial occasion of it, seemed to barrass the Americans. Strangers ;n joined me at my table and later sted on paying for the meal.” )espite the disclaimer in the bor's note at the front of the book, gathers that he sees few virtues he general run of Americans not, baps, because they are Americans because they are the architects the New Society in which we sterners live. [ strange book. Sometimes moving; letimes irritating, perhaps with a isage for the fraternity of cruising htsmen which is only dimly per ed by landlubbers, ifter touching Mangareva in nch Polynesia, Hayter headed ight for home in Nelson, New land, without calling at any of islands on the recognised cruising

litsman route.

JT.

Iusiness In Great Waters. Hodder

Stoughton. 38/6).