The film also shows Oldham stitching her own head wound. She did not. The film omits the suicide attempt and the moment with the rifle and the voice. The film’s ending — Oldham weeping as she arrives in harbor — is consistent with what multiple accounts suggest of the actual arrival.
Ashcraft worked with the filmmakers and was present on set at times. She has described being moved by specific moments in the film, particularly a scene in which Woodley alone on the wrecked boat applies duct tape to the hull — a small, practical act of repair that brought back the texture of what it actually felt like to be there, maintaining the vessel by whatever means were at hand.
The film brought the story to audiences who had not read the memoir and who may not have known the story at all. This is what adaptations do. The accuracy of the adaptation to the historical record is a separate question from its effectiveness as cinema, and those are questions that belong to separate conversations.
## What a Delivery Voyage Is
To understand the context of the Tahiti-to-San Diego voyage, it helps to understand what a delivery voyage is and what kind of person accepts the work.
Yacht deliveries exist because boats need to move and their owners often cannot or will not move them. A person who buys a yacht in New Zealand and wants it in California faces a passage of several thousand miles of open ocean. A person who winters their vessel in the Caribbean and needs it back in New England faces a passage that includes the Atlantic seaboard in conditions that can be rough. These owners — many of whom are weekend or coastal sailors who lack the offshore skills, the time, or the inclination for a long passage — hire delivery crews.