Raised in Monroe Michigan, Pamela Bitterman’s upbringing fueled her desire for sailing the seas.
She shared, “Having been raised on, worked for, and enjoyed a lifelong love of the Great Lakes, perhaps being on the water was in my DNA. But an inland lake does not an ocean make. My desire to see the world was the impetus for my joining the co-operatively owned and run 60-year old 123-foot three-masted, gaff- topsail tall ship. I discovered the ship, the sea, sailing and exploring the planet were to become my passions.”
Pamela described her sea survival, “Following a long refit in New Zealand’s South Island, the core crew and a dozen newbies set out on the short sail around the North Island, a notoriously rough passage. While rounding Cape Reinga off the northern tip of the island, only a handful of hours from our landfall in Auckland harbor, the Sofia sank. At around one a.m. while the entire crew was on deck furling sail, the ship literally sank beneath our feet. Stunned, struggling crew somehow managed to swim to two life rafts that had ejected at a proscribed depth and inflated automatically. One crew never made it to the rafts and is presumed lost with the ship. I was the last person to abandon ship, the last to hear the lost sailor call for help, and the last to make it to the rafts.”
In the aftermath of this tragedy, Pamela found a new way to embrace and share her passion.
In her words, “Recognizing this love in myself, plus having the great fortune to have a partner who shared my unique sailing history as well as a desire to keep ships and the sea in our future was propitious. After we lost the Sofia and survived the sinking, we returned to America committed to honoring a life raft marriage proposal. We raised our children aboard our own ship, a fifty-five foot Brigantine. We have never been without boats of some kind, and have never lived more than spitting distance from the ocean. I personally went on to teach maritime history and traditional seamanship aboard the Star of India, the oldest active sailing ship in the world. Often separated by years and miles, we’re proud to still be able to count our old sailing friends, today, among the most important people in our lives.”
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