Desperate Voyage (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780996041362)

At age 13, Paul J. Stam, was hunting big game in Africa with his father, not as a sport, but to provide food for the station. He has single handedly sailed a 38 foot ketch from Tahiti to Hawaii. Paul was born of missionary parents in the northeast corner of the Belgian Congo just a few miles from both the Uganda and Sudan borders. Just before the end of World War II, when he was 15, he came with his parents to the United States. After graduating from high school he enlisted in the U.S. Navy, serving aboard a destroyer during the Korean War. His tour of duty completed, Paul attend the University of Minnesota and later joined the staff. While on the staff, the University of Minnesota sent Paul to the Hawaiian Islands to attend a conference. Paul immediately fell in love with the Islands. When he returned to Minnesota he turned in his resignation and headed back to Hawaii. Within two months Paul was crewing on a sailboat. After a year of sailing the Pacific on other people's boats, Paul decided it was time to get a boat of his own. Together with his wife Terry and their ten-year-old son Steven, they built their dream boat, which they launched in 1978. Among other things Paul has been a construction worker, university teacher and administrator, and a sailboat skipper. Paul is now retired and lives in Hawaii where he spends a lot of time on the potter's wheel making bowls and mugs and at the computer writing. Paul is also author of A River That Is Congo: Of Rulers and Ruled, and A River That Is Congo: Of Chiefs and Giants both published by All Things That Matter Press.