go baby go! - "Teenage adventurer Jessica Watson will begin her solo round-the-world"

[demoleft]

"Teenage adventurer Jessica Watson will begin her solo round-the-world sailing attempt this Sunday, after days of delays caused by Sydney's recent windy weather.

The 16-year-old will sail through Sydney Heads at 9.30am (AEDT) in her yacht Ella's Pink Lady, with well-wishers expected to throng the harbour and its foreshore to send her off.

Her departure has been delayed by strong winds that have battered Sydney in recent days.
...
Jessica is attempting to become the youngest person to sail solo around the world."

i love it.

source: http://www.smh.com.au/national/jessica-watson-to-leave-...

[kestrel91316]

1. Everybody loves this sort of thing, and they will, until a child DIES on

one of these "adventures". But the entertainment value is great. Advertising dollars flow like water when people do this.

[Bucky]

8. My first thought too. It's a slicker, less crazy version of what the baloon boy family is accused of

I can't imagine, as a parent, allowing my 16 year old to do this. An around the world sailing trip would have to pass thru at least a couple of notorious piracy zones--East Africa and western Indonesia. One rule of gambling is don't put chips on the table that you're not willing to lose.

Based on that rule, I'm guessing this girl's parents have other children.

[cbayer]

10. She is rounding both capes and won't be in either territory.

Comparing this to the balloon boy fiasco is just silly. She has prepared for this for years and is taking on an incredible challenge that requires both physical and psychological strengths that few people could ever master.

I just don't get the negative reaction to this at all. This girl is an incredible role model, IMHO. This is not a publicity stunt. People have been trying to break records in the area of circumnavigation since it was possible to do it at all.

[lumberjack_jeff]

13. Rounding the capes are preferable?

Circumnavigation is an inherently risky endeavor. Solo much more so. A sailor must draw on a great deal of experience and good judgment to survive it.

I wish her luck, but her odds of surviving this are less than 90%. Maybe less than 75%.

[Bucky]

14. Surviving? No. But her odds of getting through it without being rescued are slim.

If she had a little more experience under her belt, I'd call it inspiring. Everyone's different, of course, but it sure seems like bad judgment to let a 16 year old go do this. I think in the end she'll end up having to call in form help. Things go wrong on the seas--I speak from just a little experience.

It's ridiculous to deny this is a publicity stunt, no matter how well she's been prepared for this.

[cbayer]

16. Where do you get those statistics?

She may not be successful her first time out, but I think you are way off on the mortality risk here.

[lumberjack_jeff]

21. Do you know what happened to your boat's namesake?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Slocum

The sea doesn't suffer fools gladly, and Joshua Slocum was NO fool.

The list of people who have gone missing while Solo voyaging is very long indeed. You don't have anyone to keep watch, you don't have anyone to man the radio while you man the bilge pumps. You don't have anyone to stand on the bow while navigating a reef. There is no one to read the charts while you scan for shipping traffic. You don't have anyone to push the MOB button on the GPS if you fall overboard.

I don't begrudge anyone to engage in adventure. However, the skipper is 16. This isn't *her* adventure; she doesn't have the experience, knowledge or resources to do it herself. It is her parents proxy adventure. It is a lark, and unacceptable risk.

But on the plus side, she's happy to announce that;

I've also been kitted out with the full range of Ella Baché skin care products, and to begin with, I'll admit to being a little intimidated by all those tubes and bottles! But armed with a manual and plenty of great advice I think that keeping my skin in top condition will be good fun.

http://youngestround.blogspot.com/2009/10/whirl-wind-sy...

That which doesn't kill a person makes (her) stronger. She's going to grow up a lot in the next 72 hours.

[anakie]

23. It is her parents proxy adventure

exactly; especially her mother.

Peace

[cbayer]

25. Why yes I do know. He sailed it around the world by himself.

Actually, I just read his book during a recent passage. It's pretty boring, but I felt that I should do it.

My favorite book about unassisted, solo circumnavigation is "Voyage for Madmen". Great read.

Anyway, I don't underestimate the challenges here, and the real question comes down to "how young is too young". The Dutch girl, 13, was too young, IMO. The American girl, Amy Sunderland, (whose brother just completed a solo, but assisted, trip) is also 16, but her boat seems all wrong for this.

But this one looks like she might be ready. I am not convinced it is her parents proxy adventure and am not sure how you are getting that idea. Like I said, she may not make it all the way on her first try, but I am rooting for her.

It's exactly the sort of thing I would have done at 16, had I known anything at all about boats. And now that I know quite a bit, I think she can do it.

FWIW, my husband, a lifelong sailor with a daughter who has no interest in sailing, agrees with you and disagrees with me on this. I wonder if he might feel differently if she were a he.

And preemptively, I will admit that hitting a freighter on her first night out on her shakedown cruise does not bode well, but I am still behind her.

[lumberjack_jeff]

27. Yeah. Then he was lost at sea.

He's famous because he was lucky enough to survive long enough to write.

Read Maiden Voyage by Tania Aebi. She was 18, IIRC.

The ignorance with which she started her voyage was scary. The REALLY scary part was the degree to which she was ignorant about her ignorance.

[cbayer]

28. I mentioned that book in a post in this thread, actually. That was the first solo

circumnavigation book I ever read, and I loved it.

Best thing that ever happened to her and now she's sailing with her kids. Tania has truly been an inspiration to me, and, you are correct, her lack of experience and ignorance of sailing was truly horrifying. The fact that she made it was miraculous.

But she did, and they do, and sometimes you just got to try.

FWIW, I feel safer in my boat than on land or in a plane or in a car, so I have a very skewed perspective of the whole deal. I couldn't make a solo circumnavigation, but I am fascinated and inspired by those that do.

[Whisp]

11. Its not near the balloon boy thing, imho.

This is about spirit and adventure and risk taking. Yes, it is super dangerous and chances are high that things will go not as planned at many points in the journey and could result in the extreme.

I can relate in a small way. My daughter, at the age of 18, decided to take a solo trip to Central America, for two months. I didn't want her to go, the whole family, and friends, were trying to talk her out of it. we worried and stressed, threatened, everything but tie her down. But she's stubborn as heck.

So we worried and stressed and chewed our knuckles for two whole months between emails and phone calls. And she had the time of her life, -felt an earthquake, was up on a volcano when the first hurricane of the season hit, slept in the jungle at the top of a temple, went scuba diving for the first time in her life. Made friends from around the world.

Looking back, I could never deny her those memories even though the risks were there.

[anonymous171]

18. Everybody dies eventually. Best to go out actually doing something

And at 16 she is hardly a "child."

[lumberjack_jeff]

22. "Hardly"? She is EXACTLY a child.

She's too young to legally sign the contract to moor her boat. That law is based on the good and reasonable understanding of a 16 year old's judgment.

[JanMichael]

19. Read the intro to Robin Lee Graham's book, "Dove"

about the letter his father wrote to his mother about exploration and young people.

Not many young folks attempt this; it's happened twice or so in the past 45 years that I recall.

I think it's wonderful that there are young people who want to push that envelope, and really live, instead of just reading about it. Are there going to be eventual deaths? Yep. Just like there are in space, on mountains, etc.

[MineralMan]

2. I hope she has a safe, successful voyage.

If she does, it'll be a great thing for her to remember for the rest of her life.

Good luck, kid!

[madmom]

3. By "solo" do they mean

she is alone? or is she the only one in this particular boat but being shadowed by cameras, care-givers,food etc?

[cbayer]

7. Completely alone. She will make stops for repairs, supplies, etc, but she will

sail for weeks completely alone. She will most likely have an array of communication devices, but this is a true solo circumnavigation.

[cbayer]

9. Correction - just read her website more closely.

She plans a non-stop voyage - no stops on land at all.
Even more impressive.

[Ian David]

These things usually end badly

Child pilot phenom dies by suicide
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-03-18-obit-van...

Instructor Error Cited in Crash Of Plane Flown by 7-Year-Old
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/05/us/instructor-error-c...

[Ian David]

4. Self-delete (duplicate) n/t

[Odin2005]

5. I wish her luck!

[cbayer]

6. OMG - I am so excited for her!

One of my most favorite books ever is "Maiden Voyage" by Tania Abei. She made a single handled voyage at 18 years old and was the youngest to do it at the time. Great read.

Two 16 year old boys have done it this year (one American, one British), but I have to say that seeing a girl bust their record would be pretty special.

Sweet sailing, Jessica. My heart and hopes and good wishes are with you!

[hayu_lol]

15. You cannot fault people, even young people, for attempting...

to be the first at something. Read the books, newspaper files, and so on of the period between say 1800 and the present day. Some succeed...some will die or be injured. That is the price for such endeavors.

Lindburgh went to Paris...and actually got there. Many died in the attempt.

The young lady has done her preparation and has gotten her boat into the best shape possible. Aside from hurricanes and the like, the roughest water she faces will be from Australia around the horn of Africa. If she survives that, much of the rest of the voyage will consist of boredom(note that I did not say all).

How many of today's boys and girls read books with the stories of our young explorers who set out into the unknown with insufficient backing and preparation? The books for youth today, have few heros/heroines to inspire.

Good luck to her.

[WillyT]

12. Good Luck Jessica !!! - Go Get 'Em Girl !!!

[spanone]

17. wow...as a parent, that would be difficult...as a teenager, it would be trippy

[anakie]

20. I too wish her luck

however, on her first night out on her shakedown voyage from SE Queensland to Sydney she had a collision with a 225 metre (65,000 ton) ship; due to falling asleep and not setting up her instrumentation properly; ie her collision alarm was not turned on. This in Australia's major shipping lane. The state maritime authority issued a rather damning report on the collision.

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2009/s2698518....

Still, probably best to have this sort of incident 10 miles off the coast of Australia rather than mid-Pacific where help (if any) would have been days away.

Good luck to her, I hope she makes it - or is grown up enough to pull out if it gets too tough. She is due to set off in about an hours time at approx 2200 GMT

Peace

[LisaL]

24. So previously when she took off she lasted for several hours?

That doesn't look very promising to me.

[anakie]

26. here is a link to a very full coverage

from here announcement up until this morning

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/indepth/section/0,,5...

Peace

[Fumesucker]

29. Bon voyage Mademoiselle..

I wish her luck.

[anakie]

30. She's off

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,262259...

Good luck and fair winds.

Peace

[seemunkee]

31. A 13 year old was recently stopped by protective services in Holland

Recent article in Outside
http://outside.away.com/outside/culture/200910/teenager...

the World Sailing Speed Record Council, a body based in Britain, has disavowed the "youngest" category altogether. Curiously, the talk of whose record should stand overshadowed the debate over whether kids should be attempting these feats at all

[Stinky The Clown]

32. The "Sailing" section of the public library is filled with books chronicling the many previous......

..... attempts at this very dangerous and risky endeavor.

What might this child's obituary read?

The ocean is unforgiving. The southern ocean is the worst.

I wish her well. I fear the worst.

[SidneyCarton]

35. Yep, recent generations have forgotten what it's like to be beyond the pale.

We are a settled, sedentary society, never further than a cell phone call away from help. Such a lifestyle has made it easy for us to forget that many of the former "blank spaces" on the map were drawn in by men and women who ended up lost or buried there. We still do not know the fates of the Knight Expedition, which left in the 18th century to find the Northwest Passage and was never heard from again, and finding out what happened to the Franklin Expedition put a lot of Northern Canada on the map, but at great cost.

The same is true for Antarctica, and much of the western Hemisphere. This is not to say that it is better to stay at home and hide under the bed, but to remember that just because a thing is possible, and breathtakingly audacious, does not mean it is safe.

Best of luck to this young woman, may she find fair winds and a safe harbor in the end.

[Stinky The Clown]

36. Not just in ancient times. The 1979 Fastnet (off Ireland) comes to mind. 15 deaths.

Not in the southern ocean, but a real tragedy.

Two Aussies died off Hobart just a few days ago.

Look into the history of the Whitbread race (now the Volvo race) That's a crewed southern ocean circumnav.

It all seems romantic. Again, I wish her well, but I question if she has the experiential resources necessary for a solo, non-stop, southern ocean circumnav.

[GCP]

33. She's probably setting off around about now

Good luck, little girl.

[Codeine]

34. A bunch of killjoys you lot.

I wish her well and applaud her bravery. A sixteen-year-old is only a child when they choose to be, and she has clearly chosen not to be a child any longer. I wish this young lady all the luck in the world and godspeed.