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. Just a few years earlier, Pamela Sisman Bitterman was a naïve swabbie looking for adventure, signing on with a sailing co-operative taking a sixty-year-old, three-masted gaff-topsail schooner around the globe. By the time Sofia went down, Bitterman had become an able seaman, immersing herself in this life of a tall ship sailor, world traveler, and survivor.