Bob Shepton

Bob Shepton appears in this catalog as the veteran sailboat captain who crews and guides small-boat climbing expeditions into Arctic fjords. The two films available here place him not as a climbing celebrity but as the pragmatic skipper whose boat and seamanship make remote granite walls accessible to visiting alpinists and big‑wall teams.

Vertical Sailing Greenland is the introductory record of the Belgian sailing-and-climbing formula: a small crew—Sean Villanueva O'Driscoll, the Favresse brothers and Ben Ditto—boarding Shepton’s boat and working their way from Upernavik to Cape Farewell toward the wall they call the Impossible Wall. The film is valuable to viewers who want to understand expedition logistics: the cramped life aboard, how weather dictates activity, and how a team balances instruments, photography and climbing in a high‑latitude setting.

The follow-up, The Adventures of the Dodo, returns to the same captain four years later aboard the Dodo’s Delight. Here Shepton’s role as an expedition linchpin is clearer: his decisions on route, timing and safety shape whether the crew reaches unclimbed walls in Greenland and on Baffin Island. Watching both films together teaches a viewer about small-boat approaches in polar seas, the unpredictability of Arctic objectives (ice, storms, polar bears), and how a climbing season can be as much about seamanship and patience as about the rock itself.