Sailing to the Far Horizon

The tall ship Sofia sank off New Zealand’s North Island in February 1982, stranding its crew on disabled life rafts for five days. They struggled to survive as any realistic hope of rescue dwindled. Just a few years earlier, Pamela Sisman Bitterman was a naive swabbie looking for adventure, signing on with a sailing co-operative taking this sixty-year-old, 123-foot, three-masted gaff-topsail schooner around the globe. The aged Baltic trader had been rescued from a wooden boat graveyard in Sweden and reincarnated as a floating commune in the 1960s. By the time Sofia went down, Bitterman had become an able seaman, promoted first to bos’un and then acting first mate, immersing herself in this life of a tall ship sailor, world traveler, and survivor.

Pamela Sisman Bitterman is author of Muzungu, a travel memoir of her experience in Kenya, and the children’s book When This Is Over, I Will Go to School, and I Will Learn to Read, which won a CBC Gold Medal and a Sharp Writ book award. She lives in San Diego, California.