PACIFIC LADY
a short documentary
Fifty-five years after becoming the first woman to solo-hand sail the Pacific Ocean,
Sharon Sites Adams looks back at 15,000 nautical miles at sea and her time on the open ocean.
FILM SYNOPSIS
In 1965, less than eight months after stepping on a sailboat, Sharon Sites Adams set sail for Hawaii on a twenty-foot Danish folk boat -- alone. Four years later, she became the first woman to single-handedly sail the Pacific, sailing from Yokohama, Japan, to San Diego without GPS, internet, radio, or satellite to guide her. And she filmed it all on 16mm film. Weaving together present-day footage of Sharon with her archival footage, Pacific Lady is a historic snapshot and ultimately, a love story between a woman and her boat.
TEAM
ZADA CLARKE - DIRECTOR/PRODUCER
Zada Clarke is a producer and filmmaker working across branded and editorial content, documentary films, and series. This is her first film as director. She first read Sharon’s book Pacific Lady in 2019. On the surface, it’s a glorious adventure with the shiny golden stamp of “first woman to…” a title that can often overlook the entirety of the person who holds it. The story stuck, and in 2024, Zada finally reached out to Sharon and discussed filming. Two weeks later, she and a small crew were interviewing Sharon in her tiny apartment in Portland, Oregon. Over the course of two years with many stops and starts, the film was crafted by an incredible team of filmmakers and friends. It is being shown at film festivals around the world. Zada sees it as a full-circle moment to see Emma and Ginny rebuild Sea Sharp and is excited to be a part of the journey.
CAILIN YATSKO - DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
CAILIN YATSKO (she/her), originally from Arkansas, is a New York City-based narrative and commercial cinematographer. In 2011, she partnered with director Ani Simon-Kennedy to form Bicephaly Pictures, one of just a few female production companies in NYC - producing narrative films, music videos, web series, and commercials. Her commercial cinematography includes award-winning branded and editorial content for clients such as Google, Intel, Condé Nast, Colgate, The New Yorker, The Fader, Vice, and many others. With director Ani Simon-Kennedy, they have collaborated on two narrative features: Days of Gray and The Short History of the Long Road, which premiered in US Narrative Competition at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival and released by FilmRise. She also shot with director Cynthia Lowen for the feature documentary Netizens, exposing the proliferation of cyber harassment facing women (2018 Tribeca Film Festival).
A documentary film + tv editor who sometimes dips into narrative films, music videos and shorts. Hypatia’s work has screened at various film festivals including Sundance, Tribeca, DOC NYC, Hot Docs and DC/DOX and can be found on HBO, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Starz, Discovery and Nat Geo. Originally from rural Northern California, she now lives and works between New York City + upstate. She is always on the lookout for film projects that offer new perspectives, ideas and ways of looking at the world.
Stephen Spies is an Emmy Award-winning composer for film, animation, TV and video games who has scored projects for Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV and Prime Video. Along with co-composer Scot Stafford, he won an Emmy for his music on the Netflix show Lost Ollie featuring Mary J Blige, Gina Rodriguez, Jake Johnson and Jonathan Groff. With Pollen Music Group, he scored the Netflix hit children’s TV show, Trash Truck, a wholesome animation series about a boy whose best friend in the world is a trash truck. Stephen also scored the CPJ International Press Freedom Awards documentary hosted by Meryl Streep and featuring Samantha Bee, Lester Holt, Rosamund Pike, Amal Clooney and many others fighting to protect journalists. Other credits of his include additional composition on the recent Netflix animation film Ultraman: Rising which was in the top 10 worldwide most watched movies on Netflix for 2 weeks straight, and over 50 IMDB credits including documentaries, virtual reality projects and much more. He has also scored numerous virtual reality games for Meta Quest and Apple Vision Pro.