Fearless One Woman, One Kayak, One Continent

Freya Hoffmeister takes on sharks, crocs, and huge surf in the most audacious paddle adventure of the century.

Fearless is the story of Freya Hoffmeister, a forty-six-year-old former sky diver, gymnast, marksman, and Miss Germany contestant, who left her twelve-year-old son behind to paddle alone and unsupported around Australia—a year-long adventure that virtually every expert guaranteed would get her killed. She was determined not only to survive the 9,420-mile trip through huge, shark-infested seas, but to do it faster than the only other paddler to have completed the circuit, twenty-seven years earlier.Journalist and expert kayaker Joe Glickman follows Freya's 332-day voyage, including the daring 350-mile open-ocean crossing that shaved three weeks off her trip. In the end, he says, "Her vanity and pigheadedness paled next to her nearly superhuman ability to master fear and persevere."