An Ocean to Cross: Daring the Atlantic, Claiming a New Life

Premanently crippled in a fall from a horse, Liz Fordred refused to accept the limitations assumed for her in the Rhodesia of the late 1970s. She met and eventually married an equally (if more quietly determined) accident survivor named Pete Fordred, and together they hatched an audacious plan to build a boat and sail around the world. That they lived more than 1000 miles from the ocean and had never sailed before did not stop them. Neither would their lack of money or the fact that basic boat equipment was impossible to obtain in Rhodesia. Fabricating metal parts, learning carpentry, and resolutely tackling one seemingly insoluble problem after another, they built their boat in three years, trucked it to the South African coast, rigged it, learned to sail and ultimately sailed the boat to America, where they forged a new life in Florida.