Chapter 2

2. Three Sides. In her next journal entry, Sophie writes that her father calls her “Three-sided Sophie,” because one side of her personality is “dreamy and romantic,” while another is “logical and down-to-earth,” and the third side is “hardheaded and impulsive.”

Sophie tells us that she’s thirteen years old, and that she’s going to sail across the ocean with her uncles and cousins to visit her grandfather, Bompie, in England. She says that her uncles Stew and Mo tried to dissuade her from joining them on the trip—they told her that the boat wouldn’t be “a very pleasant place for a girl.” Uncle Dock, whom Sophie calls “the good uncle,” supports Sophie’s desire to join them, arguing that she knows more about boats than her two cousins—Brian and Cody—combined.

Sophie’s unique and often exotic way of thinking gets foregrounded here—we get a sense that the people around her perceive her to be complex, multi-faceted, and somewhat unpredictable.

Already we can see that Sophie will be something of an outsider aboard the boat, largely because she’s the only female crewmember. Sophie’s gender is going to play a large role in determining her status on the ship; though Sophie is clearly very eager to sail and is quite knowledgeable about boats, her crewmembers unfairly stereotype her as someone who doesn’t belong.