'Maiden' voyage made history and now a pretty fascinating documentary

Edwards leads her tough yachtswomen through some real challenges in "Maiden."

While American sports fans were reveling in a 1989 baseball pennant race that would find the Oakland A's sweeping their neighboring San Francisco Giants in what became known as "The Earthquake Series,"  a group of young ladies on a yacht already were beginning a nine-month journey that eventually would shake up the rest of the world.

Their boat was the aptly named "Maiden," skippered by a 27-year-old former short-order cook whose early life struggles deserve to make a quite compelling feature film some day soon. Her all-female crew, with equal room for an assortment of actresses to play them with strength and guts, was the first distaff assemblage to enter the Whitbread Round the World Race from Southampton and back (with stops in Uruguay, Australia and Florida along the treacherous way).

Currently, their story is making the rounds in a documentary from first-time film director Alex Holmes. No-BS captain Tracy Edwards -- and a few of her still-remarkable and personable ship mates --  also share anecdotes and snippets from the rousing adventure that captivated the sizable throng following them as closely as they could in those long-before-Internet days.

Edwards starts the proceedings with this warning: "The ocean is always trying to kill you . . . It doesn't take a break . . .  There is just no hope if anything happens."

Simply just go watch it to get an eyeful of what she was talking about.

Rated "PG": language, thematic elements, some suggestive content and brief smoking images; 1:37; $ $ $ $ out of $5