Reverend Bob Shepton // Arctic Sailor & Circumnavigator

On the Wind Sailing

Andy Schell

Sports, Wilderness, Places & Travel, Society & Culture

4.8 • 593 Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2016

⏱️ 88 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

#173. The Reverend Bob Shepton, now 81, got his start shortly after WWII as a climbing instructor in the British Armed Forces, where he used the outdoors to teach leadership & scripture. He didn't start sailing until much later in life, but got real serious about it real quickly. I sat down with him at the Southampton Boat Show to talk religion, spirituality, his early days as a climber, losing his boat during an Arctic winter, his 15 Atlantic crossings, meeting the Wild Bunch, and the story behind the film series 'Vertical Sailing Greenland.'

The music in this episode is courtesy of the Wild Bunch.

This episode is sponsored by Forbes Horton Yachts. Visit forbesyachts.com.

Bob Shepton might not be a household name in the US, but he certainly is in the UK. He was honored as 'Yachtsman of the Year in 2014, which may sound irrelevant until you realize the winners in 2013 & 2015 - that would be Sir Ben Ainslie & Sir Robin Knox-Johnston. Good company indeed. Anyway, Bob is one of the most accomplished and yet most humble sailors I've ever met. My interview with him was like sitting down with your favorite grandfather and hearing him tell old stories. We could have talked for hours, and Bob seemed to enjoy every second of it. Before you listen to this episode, take five minutes and watch Episode 2 of Vertical Sailing Greenland - it's linked for you in the show notes. That film is what initially inspired me to reach out to Bob, and he tells the behind-the-scenes story of it at length about halfway through our chat.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey team, real quick, we've started a Patreon account. To be clear, the show will always be free,
0:06.6	and I will never specifically ask anybody for money, but if you want to contribute, we've made
0:12.2	it easy to do so. So head over to patreon.com slash on the wind. It's also going to be a place
0:17.1	where we're going to put up some audio outtakes, some music, some high-res photos you can download, stuff like that to thank our patrons. So again, head over to patreon.com
0:26.2	slash on the wind, and thank you very much in advance. I forgot to ask you yesterday, Dodo's Delight.
0:45.0	Why did you, did you name it that?
0:46.5	Where does the name come from?
0:47.6	No, we named it, yeah.
0:49.8	Well, again, it's a rather a long story.
0:51.8	When we first had the first Dodo's delight, we wanted to name it.
0:57.4	And in those days, it was only the British Registrar of shipping if you wanted to register it.
1:03.1	And you had to choose a name that nobody else had chosen. So we chose what we thought were nine
1:07.6	unique names, only for the registrar to come back and say,
1:12.2	they've all been taken. My youngest daughter at the time was reading a delightful children's
1:16.9	book called Do Doe's Delight. She said, you was call it Dodo's Delight. And we did. And actually,
1:22.7	the other alternative that I had in mind was Sea Shuttle. But I'm very glad we chose Dodo'sodo's delight because as Blondie Hasler said you want to choose a name for your boat go up into the Scottish hills and shout the name and see what it would sound like at 2 a.m. in the morning so she shuttle would not really do oh that's awesome. Cool. Thanks.
1:59.0	On the wind is sponsored this week by Forbes Horton Yachts.
2:00.2	Here's Forbes.
2:08.4	I've always found that the best buys with boats are typically the boat, you know, the nicest boat that you can afford.
2:09.9	And of course, as a broker, I'm going to say go for the most expensive one.
2:13.6	But in reality, sellers typically will see 50 cents on the dollar for upgrades.
2:21.0	So paying what you perceive to be top dollar when looking at sold boats or other comparables
	...

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