I'd like you to meet Bob Shepton.
Born in Malaya in 1935, the son of a rubber estate manager, Bob now lives in Appin, close to Oban. He and his wife have four children.
Bob was in Australia with his mother and sister when the Japanese invaded Malaya. They took passage across the Pacific and Atlantic in 1941. (Two boats were torpedoed in the Atlantic convoy.) Bob attended a boarding school in the UK. He did national service as a subaltern in the Royal Marines, then went to Cambridge and theological college and was ordained in Salisbury cathedral. After a curacy in Weymouth, where he discovered and developed climbing on the limestone cliffs of Lulworth and Portland, he assumed leadership roles in youth clubs in downtown London. Then life got interesting.
Interesting is not quite the word. Bob became acquainted with danger. He found himself having to choose between two congenial but tricky pursuits -- mountaineering and sailing. Being a school chaplain had something to do with it. He took recent school-leavers from Kingham Hill (Lord Adonis's old school) on a round the world trip of 38,000 miles and was the first to do so. He also undertook a crossing of the Atlantic, Portland to Portland, with a similar crew and introduced adults later to the cliffs on the west coast of Greenland. In that part of the world it is possible (for those who get along without qualms) to get straight out of a boat and on to the rock-face. This made it possible for Bob to give scope to his two passions in an economical fashion.
That was not the end of it. In his 33-foot sloop Dodo Delight he has covered 140 000 miles and made 15 Atlantic crossings. He is familiar with St Kilda and South Georgia. Indeed he sailed from the Falklands to South Georgia in his eighties, hoping to emulate Shackleton's notable feat of crossing the island (then largely unexplored) after making his way across the Southern Ocean in an open boat to bring help to his men who had been left 800 miles away on Elephant Island. Vicious weather and advancing years made this out of the question, even for somebody as resolute as Bob. He stayed in Dodo Delight while younger men set out on the trek across South Georgia.
Ask him about scary moments and he will recall losing Dodo Delight to fire off the coast of Greenland. He lost the mast in Antarctica and had to limp home (to the Falklands) with a jury-rig. He remembers rounding Cape Horn. He speaks of it, as you might expect, in a self-deprecatory manner.
Bob has received recognition for his exploits. He is a recognised Arctic explorer, advisor and Ice Pilot. He received a Piolet d'Or (mountaineering award) with his 'Wild Bunch' in 2011 and was voted Yachtsman of the Year in 2013. You can read more about him on his website and in his book 'Addicted to Adventure'. Some addiction.
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