Yachting and Boating World forums: Ice bird by David Lewis

I've just re-visited the scariest seafaring book I know.
Davis Lewis sailed his small, 32', steel boat, single-handed from Australia to Palmer in Antarctica. The following year he continued from Palmer to South Africa. He spends many weeks at 60 south and and higher, as low after low sweep past him. However often I read the book, the feeling of sheer terror never leaves me. The tension lies in the fact that he is alone, with badly frost bitten fingers, thousands of miles from anyone.He is dismasted (twice) and faces staggeringly awful conditions every day. The list of ingredients is almost as if drawn from the deepest recesses of a frantically paranoid and fearful mind, but it is all real. The guy just gets on with it, he has no choice, but the resilience and calmness of the writing is almost Tilmanesque in its quiet understatement. The brooding nature and remoteness of the location creates a morbid sense of foreboding in the reader. I cannot recommend this book enough, it is one of the masterpieces of modern, single-handed seafaring adventure.

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