A seafaring Amelia Earhart chronicles her pioneering sailing
career.In 1969, Adams, aboard the Sea Sharp II, was completing her
journey from Yokohama, Japan, to San Diego, Calif., becoming the
first woman to single-handedly sail the Pacific. Four years
earlier, at 35 and in the wake of her second husband's untimely
death, she had - amazingly, with only eight month's sailing
experience - become the first woman to journey solo from Los
Angeles to Hawaii. With journalist Coates (Cambodia Now: Life in
the Wake of War, 2005), Adams recounts both voyages, undertaken at
a time before cell phones, computers and GPS removed much of the
risk, when the whole idea of a "lady-sailor" placing herself in
such jeopardy inspired controversy. Modestly, Adams makes no great
claims for her seamanship or courage, nor does she confess a desire
to have achieved any "firsts," either as a mariner or a woman.
Rather, she says, "I simply wanted to sail...alone and didn't see
why I couldn't." Notwithstanding the troubled personal life only
briefly discussed here - early adoption into an unhappy household,
the death of two husbands and divorce from two more, the
abandonment her two young children - Adams eschews introspection or
grand pronouncements on the meaning of it all. Instead, her story,
which certainly contains moments of excitement and discovery,
dwells on the sheer banality of such sea ventures, emphasizing the
need for persistent labor and attention in the face of freely
confessed loneliness, fear, depression, nausea, injury and
uncertainty. She devotes a few chapters to her globe-trotting life
between and after her notable solo sails, crewing in the South
Pacific, joining the Queen Mary's final voyage and working at the
Marina del Rey, but the heart of this book and her importance to
history rests with her solo conquest of the vast Pacific.A
straight-ahead, determined account by a straight-ahead, determined
woman. (Kirkus Reviews)
It was an age without GPS and the Internet, without high-tech
monitoring and instantaneous reporting. And it was a time when
women simply didn't do such things. None of this deterred Sharon
Sites Adams. In June 1965 Adams made history as the first woman to
sail solo from the mainland United States to Hawaii. Four years
later, just as Neil Armstrong very publicly stepped onto the moon,
the diminutive Adams, alone and unobserved, finally sighted Point
Arguello, California, after seventy-four days sailing a
thirty-one-foot ketch from Japan, across the violent and
unpredictable Pacific. She was the first woman to do so, setting
another world record. Inspiring and exciting, Adams's memoir
recounts the personal path leading to her historic achievements: a
tomboy childhood in the Oregon high desert, an early marriage and
painful divorce, and a second marriage that ended when her husband
died of cancer. In the wake of his death and almost by accident,
Adams discovered sailing. Six weeks after her first sailing lesson
she bought a boat, and within eight months she set out to achieve
her first world record. Pacific Lady recounts the inward journey
that paralleled her sailing feats, as Adams drew on every scrap of
courage and navigational skill she could muster to overcome the
seasickness, exhaustion, and loneliness that marked her harrowing
crossings. Purchase the audio edition.
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