Books reviewed by Paul Talbot

Morning LightMorning Light

DVD Produced by Walt Disney Studios
RRP $29.95
94 minutes (Rated PG)
Released worldwide on 25 November, Morning Light is a Disney-produced documentary of the selection of a young and inexperienced crew to sail Roy Disney’s 52-footer Morning Light in the 2007 Los Angeles-Honolulu Transpac.
The DVD tracks the fortunes of 15 aspiring sailors who answered an ad from Disney and partner, Leslie Demeuse, who are both experienced ocean sailors with a swag of Transpac races between them. The 15, cut to 11 for the race during the DVD, are the remnants of the original 500 applicants.
Spending some six months in pre-race training and preparation, the group is shown in the various stages of selection, including that of 21-year-old Australian Jeremy Wilmot as skipper. In an emotional day, the start of the race sees the crew as the youngest ever to have competed in the Transpac and it is not without some trepidation that Disney and Demeuse farewell them at the docks.
Morning Light’s progress through the race is beautifully filmed as the crew copes with the trials of ocean racing. The yacht crosses the finish line off Diamond Head, appropriately, at morning light. Extras include ESPN’s serial coverage of Morning Light’s progress leading up to the race. A great adventure shot beautifully with the Disney touch.

Hell on High Seas by Rob MundleHell on High Seas

by Rob Mundle
published by HarperCollins Publishers Australia
RRP $35.00. (276pp; 235mm x 155mm)
Published in December 2009, Rob Mundle’s latest book Hell on High Seas is a great way to start the year. You might have been lucky at Christmas time and got this one in your stocking.
Rob Mundle has stamped himself as an able chronicler of Australian yachting history, although he sets his sails a little wider, on this occasion, to capture the stories of people who have survived catastrophes at sea around the world.
Imagine this: a 25-year-old sailor aboard the classic maxi Ondine II, called up on deck in the black of night to assist in avoiding a loss of rigging, to find a crew battling for survival. His instincts to secure the foot of a wildly flogging spinnaker resulted in his being launched into the black sky, with a “death grip” on the spinnaker sheet and a wire wrapped around his legs. With clever maneuvers by the helmsman, willing hands to drag him back on board and an astonished audience of renowned sailors, declaring him to be not back on board, but dead, the young sailor lived to tell his tale.
And this was Rob Mundle’s own story of miraculous survival and the introductory chapter to the book! No wonder he wanted to write about other people’s experiences.
Hell on High Seas recounts the survival stories of many a sailor that would be enough to discourage others from taking up the challenges, both professional and amateur. Take the story of the “missing Mexicans” – three poor fishermen co-opted onto a dory for a fishing expedition by an inexperienced skipper and his mate. Nine months later, the three poor fishos turn up mid-Pacific on the disabled dory with the most extraordinary tale of survival. Did they consume the skipper and mate to account for their rescue? I won’t spoil the ending.
Many other similar remarkable stories are included in Hell on High Seas, including the final chapter, reprising the tragic loss of Richard Winning’s yacht, Winston Churchill, in the 1998 Sydney-Hobart. In more detail than he had the opportunity to provide in Fatal Storm, his story of that race, Mundle takes the time to describe more fully the remarkable survival of most of Winston Churchill’s crew. It’s a sad reminder of how the conditions were out of the control of the sailors of that race.