Overlooked is a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.

When Audrey Sutherland made a plan to set out in an inflatable kayak, alone, and paddle 850 miles from Ketchikan to Skagway in Alaska, she was not what most would have considered a typical candidate for the feat, especially in 1980. She was a woman. She was 60 years old. And most of her paddling experience — extensive as it was — had been in Hawaii, where the waters were warmer, calmer and more inviting.

Also, there was a holdup: Her request for a two-month leave from her job had been rejected.

“I walked into the bathroom and looked at the familiar person in the mirror,” she wrote in “Paddling North” (2012), about her decision to take the trip. “‘Getting older, aren’t you lady? Better do the physical things now. You can work at a desk later.’”

She resigned the next day and set out for Alaska two months later.

She made the paddle in 85 days, split over two summers, and decided to keep going. In “Paddling North,” she estimated that she had covered 8,075 solo miles in Alaska and British Columbia over nearly 25 years.