There’s a scene in the movie Moana when Tala, the grandmother figure of Motunui, a fictional South Pacific island, is lying on her deathbed, speaking her last words of wisdom to the titular character, who must go to sea to save her village and the world. But Moana is afraid of leaving her grandmother behind.

“There’s nowhere you can go that I won’t be with you,” Grandmother Tala whispers to Moana, who by those words musters the courage to sail out beyond the reef and off to her destiny.

Grandmother Tala always reminded me of Pam Wall. In fact, many people referred to Pam as “Grandma Ocean,” especially later in her life. Pam died on August 2, 2024, at 80 years old. She is survived by her son, Jamie, and by her granddaughter, Andinah Jean Power, her late daughter Samantha’s child.

Pam was a legendary sailor from a generation of legendary sailors, the OG “strong woman at sea” figure that has so inspired my wife, Mia, and others. From Chicago originally, Pam grew up sailing on her father’s racing boat on Lake Michigan. Later, while living in Florida, she was swept off her feet by a strapping Australian solo sailor named Andy Wall who had big cruising plans. It was love at first sight, and Pam signed on immediately. Her first of many Atlantic crossings was on the tiny, 28-foot Carronade, a boat that Andy had quietly sailed around Cape Horn, becoming the first private Australian yacht to do so and the smallest at the time.

Pam and Andy led a life at sea together, eventually buying the plans to an iconic ocean racer, the Freya 39, which held the distinction of winning the Sydney Hobart Race three years straight in the ’60s. They laid up the hull themselves and completed the boat, circumnavigating before the GPS age with their young children Jamie and Samantha. Pam continued to sail Kandarik, keeping the iconic boat in perfect condition on her backyard dock in a canal in Fort Lauderdale until the day she died.

Pam’s life was at once tragic and inspirational. She lost Samantha and Andy to cancer in quick succession yet remained one of the most passionate and positive people I’d ever met. I’d known Pam since the late 2000s, having met her at a cookout at John Kretschmer’s house in Fort Lauderdale after one of his celestial navigation workshops. Pam always reminded me of my own mom, who I lost to cancer in 2012, and became a kind of Grandma Ocean to Mia and myself, and later to our son, Axel.

But we weren’t unique. Pam’s family became the sailing community, and she took many a young cruiser under her wing. She worked together with West Marine for years helping cruisers outfit their boats for long-distance voyaging and continued to give lectures and share her stories into her late 70s. Pam had a special way of telling sea stories, able to entertain a room full of sailors while sharing timeless lessons on seam’nship.

Both Mia and I have had the privilege of staying with Pam at her Fort Lauderdale house, using it as a home base of sorts when we’d be in town to update our licenses or complete a medical exam. The place was a museum—all the classic sailing books on a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf that Andy built in the same style as Kandarik’s Herreshoff interior; an old belaying pin from Sterling Hayden’s Wanderer; photo albums and handwritten logbooks from Kandarik and Carronade. I can only hope that they find a good home to carry on the legacy that Pam has created.

One of her final legacies was helping her son, Jamie, found Foundation Comblé in France in honor of her late daughter, Samantha. The foundation supports emerging artists and artists-in-residence with a focus on exhibition and in an effort to help inspire and support the art community “to harmonize and cross pollinate, to perpetuate and ultimately grow…the essential gift the visual arts leave to the record of civilization.”

In the film Moana, Grandmother Tala passes away completely at peace with a life well lived, inspiring the younger generation to follow their hearts to the sea, and I’m confident Pam went in much the same way. When Moana is struggling to find her way, alone on the open ocean, Grandmother Tala’s spirit returns in the form of a phosphorescent stingray, giving hope and courage to Moana to keep going. I have no doubt that Pam’s spirit will be there at sea as well, with all the people she’s touched and inspired in her beautiful life.

(For more about Pam, see Andy’s story “Grandma Ocean,” August/September 2023)