Adrian Hayter grew up on New Zealand's desolate D'Urville Island, attended Nelson College and later Sandhurst Military College in England, before joining the Gurkhas in India as a British officer in the 1930s.

In war, he was awarded the Military Cross and, later, the MBE, but by 1949, desperate to make sense of man's inhumanity to man, he resigned from a glittering military career to set sail from England to New Zealand.
His sailing experience was virtually nil.

Six years later, he became the first person to sail single-handed from England to New Zealand. Sheila in the Wind became an international best seller and has been republished by Lodestar Books, UK, more than 60 years after its first edition.