In the following excerpt from Wild Seas to Greenland — A Sailing Adventure with Ocean Racer Ross Field, veteran mariner Rebecca Hayter, recounts how Field prepared the aluminum-hulled Rosemary, which he bought in France, for a try at the Northwest Passage
“People often ask: why buy a boat like this? Simple, boats like this are a rarity, like a rare piece of art. Rosemary is not the most beautiful-looking boat, but I like her, she’s different.”
—Ross Field
When retired offshore racer and Volvo Ocean Race and Whitbread veteran Ross Field planned Rosemary’s refit, he had one word in mind: simplify. A major yacht refit involves a huge amount of problem solving against the criteria of budget, competing sales pitches and advice from the ultimate expert: the hardstand bystander.
Keeping it simple was going to be complicated.
But Ross is decisive by nature and had run many big boating projects in tight time frames. “I do have an ability to see through problems,” he says. “You start writing lists, and it doesn’t look too bad. I started that at Port Napoléon [in the south of France] and continued during the sail to the UK. It’s always more work than you think, but as long as I have lists, I’ve got it under control.”
Through the New Zealand winters of 2015 and 2016, Ross based himself in Lymington, on England’s south coast. By then I’d resigned as editor of to buy a 10-acre lifestyle block in Golden Bay at the top of
