Rodger is a sexagenarian suffering from tuberculosis. After his doctor gives him less than a year to live, Roger decides to fulfill a life-long fantasy of purchasing a sailboat and sailing to Tahiti but is fearful that his wife and three grown sons will interfere. In his secretive search for just the right sailboat that he can single-hand for the trip, he answers a newspaper advertisement for a thirty-foot Tahiti ketch. Much to his surprise, he discovers the owner to be a widow whose sailing partner, her husband, died the previous year. Because she has no one to sail with, she reluctantly decides to sell the "Sea Witch." While showing the boat to Rodger, she realizes that he is determined to learn but has no hands-on sailing experience. Because Helen is lonely, loves to sail, and is maybe a little bit desperate herself for companionship and a sailing adventure, she offers to skipper the boat for him and teach him to be a sailor. Rodger becomes first mate and experiences the greatest adventure of all as he and Helen embark on their runaway journey to Tahiti.