Wild Seas to Greenland
a sailing adventure with ocean racer Ross Field,
by Rebecca Hayter
 

Ross Field is one of New Zealand's most successful ocean racers. He was watch captain on Peter Blake's victorious Steinlager 2 in the 1990 Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race and won the race again, as skipper of Yamaha in 1994, prior to a highly successful career in Europe. He retired from ocean racing in 2021, after suffering a back injury while leading in the Global Challenge.

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Small Boat to Greenland in North & South won Highly Commended in the TravCom Awards, 2019 and became a chapter in Wild Seas to Greenland.

That's me, left, with editor Virginia Larson and journalist Mike White.

Ross Field bought Rosemary, a 55ft, 20-year-old Joubert-Nivelt design, in France in 2015. His refit, based on 35 years' ocean racing experience, achieved a 30% improvement in performance under power and sail.

​Rosemary and her crew sailed across the North Atlantic Ocean to Greenland and spied their first iceberg just as a pilot whale broke the surface.

Ross Field describes weather routing as the greatest advance in safety at sea. A technical chapter in Wild Seas to Greenland describes in detail how Ross navigated Rosemary safely around North Atlantic storm systems.

'...it was fun driving Rosemary through the turns in the mountains. We took a right off the main fjord and passed snow-striped mountains to anchor overnight at Qooqqut at the head of a small fjord.'

'Ross went below to sleep and left me on deck as midnight painted the Arctic. Rosemary had entered a portal to an alternative universe. It held us in gentle vastness as sunset stole into the early hours of the following day like a mischievous thief of time.' - Wild Seas to Greenland

'Ross told us that the barometer would drop, wind would steadily increase until we got some rain around 6 p.m., then it would continue to build until 11 p.m. We would get 30, maybe 40, knots. It was coming in slightly earlier that expected so he thought we might get more wind than forecast.' - Wild Seas to Greenland.

Superbly published by Oceanspirit Publishing, designed by Cheryl Smith of Macarn Design and printed on environmentally sustainable paper, 200 pages, plus more than 60 colour photographs, and printed in Hong Kong. Also available as an e-book.

Wild Seas to Greenland has numerous excerpts from Sheila in the Wind, by Adrian Hayter, the author's father, which provides a poignant juxtaposition to sailing in the 1950s versus 2017.

Being so close to Magnetic North played havoc with our compasses and therefore our autopilot, but it was fun motoring among mountains from Nuuk, Greenland's capital city, inland to Kapisillit.