Must be the weather.
Abby Sunderland, 16 year old sister of Zak, a 17 year old circumnavigator, departs on Saturday from Marina Del Rey, (Los Angeles) in her 40 ft racing sail boat, headed for the horn.
She is a few months younger than Jessica.
Lew
Imagine...
A young girl on a 40 ft boat all alone in treacherous waters.
I think our local newscaster with tow girls of his own said it best:
"For Gawd's sake; doesn't this girl have parents?"
Apparently not.
Robert
As records for 'The Youngest' keep being challenged, at some point in the future it will have to be a 6-year old who sets sail.
A 16 year old has a 40' sail boat, racing or not? I must have been doing something wrong.
At least it is summer down there.
No kidding.
Tania Aebi circumnavigated in a smaller boat starting at 18. And she did have parents--they gave her the choice--sail this boat around the world, go to college, or we're cutting you off. She took the boat. Why they offered her that particular choice I have no idea. Was a good one though--she got a lot of life experience, a writing career, a husband, a cat, and a Hell of a tan out of it. However officially it didn't count as a solo circumnavigation because she gave somebody a ride between two islands somewhere in the depths of the Pacific. She had no prior sailing experience to speak of.
Robin Lee Graham started his circumnavigation at 16 in a 24 foot boat and traded it for a 33 footer along the way.
Right now there's another 16 year old girl halfway around on a circumnavigation.
Abby is sailing an Open 40, which is purpose-designed for singlehanded circumnavigation, which puts her well ahead of Tania and Robin at the start. And her parents seem to be behind her 100 percent on this.
My view is that she's lucky to be able to get that particular bug out of her system at an early age, and no matter what she goes into it's going to look damned good on her resume.
It amazes me that people are finding fault over this. While we want to believe that 16 year olds are children they are only so because we force them into that mold--Alexander the Great was successfully commanding armies at that age. This particular girl has a dream and the means to carry it out and if you read her blog you'll know that she's thought it through and gotten a good deal of relevant experience and made a careful choice of equipment and is not operating on a shoestring budget, so what is your _problem_?
Just another example of what would otherwise be a noble adventure of personal achievement in the privacy of the open ocean, cheapened by the blogging, hype, and orchestrated media involvement into nothing more than a publicity stunt for milking "pop culture" of the perceived rewards of '15 minutes of fame' ... barely half a peg higher than the balloon boy's.
Your gullibility?
This.
Kids that age also totally believe that they are invincible. Suppose a hurricane blows through.... or pirates, they would have a ball with her....literally, that is my problem..
You're kidding, right? I didn't see a smiley or wink, so I will assume you were. Otherwise to follow that statement to its untimely end, we would have to say that the average person lived (depending on the source) about 30 years on this planet.
So in your world, using your example, she is matured to middle aged?
Are you comparing her to the social standards of almost 25 centuries past?
Surely you must be kidding.
This is a girl that can't even legally drive a car without an adult in it.
(Yeah I know, I am waiting for the farm boys to chime in and tell us they started driving on their grandpa's lap at 4 yrs. old.... save it.)
Now this girl wants to sail by herself, unassisted, non stop, for what will probably turn out to be a year. A year of isolation, a year of constant danger going through as described "some of the most dangerous waters in the world", called "the sailor's graveyard".
I don't know how much credence I would put in a 16 year old's assessment when "thinking things through" when their life is at stake. While she may be quite competent for a 16 year old, indeed, she is still 16.
I don't care how much it is, but the claim that "gotten a good deal of relevant experience" doesn't include being pursued by pirates/rapers/ muderers, handling her boat when the systems fail in a storm, say in "sailor's graveyard", etc.
I hope everything turns out OK for this kid and she can come back and parlay this into her fifteen minutes. She can write a book, a children's inspirational book, a TV movie for Kid's Discovery, and go on Oprah. She can be an inspiration for further pointless grabs for attention by kids everywhere.
If she is murdered, missing, or smashed to pieces in a storm during this event I hope they go after they parents for negligence.
After all, at 16 you can't even enter into a legally binding agreement as you are still considered a minor.
Just because folks have the money to do whatever they want when they want, doesn't mean it is a good idea.
Robert
Not at all.
As stated elsewhere, this 16 year old has been sailing since she was a rug rat.
She is NOT just any 16 year old kid being thrown to the devil, but an experienced sailor who is part of a sailing family who has also done some single handed sailing.
Single handled sailing requires a certain focus.
You do it right or you do it dead.
IOW, you mature in a hurry.
She obviously has spent a lot of time not only developing a well thought out game plan, but also the equipment needed and her required personal preparation to accomplish the desired end result.
This is not some hocus pocus 15 minutes of fame gig, but a well thought out plan of an experienced sailor who just happens to be 16 years old.
BTW, the Modesto Bee needs to get a sailor on staff if they want to cover a seafaring event.
Being land locked in the central valley gives them a good perspective on growing crops, but sailing, not so much.
Lew
Experienced a tragic example of that a few years back.
I grew up on a horse farm; rode, trained, show jumped, rodeoed, roped, rode dressage and three day events, and even held a farriers license at one time, so there is little about a horse, and horsemanship, I haven't been exposed to since I was old enough to remember.
Two years ago all the horse crazy kids and their Moms in this affluent neighborhood were all talking up, and hiring, a 14 year old girl as the "OMG!!, BEST 'horse trainer' in the whole world!!".
I'm sorry, but there is simply NO way a 14 year old kid is old enough to have the "experience", knowledge, and judgment to be anything but a pimple on a real horseman's butt.
Sure enough, and with parents with more money than sense pushing her all the while, the young lady, two years later and tragically, is a now a quadriplegic ... simply because of her inexperience and lack of judgment in getting herself into a situation that no "horseman" would have gotten into in the first place.
It was sobering for a lot of these kids ... but damn, there are simply some things you just don't fool with without both lengthy experience, knowledge, and a finely tuned judgment based on both ... mother nature, and large quadrapeds capable of killing you, included.
Despite the current cultural perception to the contrary, life is NOT a farking "My Friend Flicka" movie/video game ...
OK then, I piloted an airplane at 12. I was under age to sign a contract myself when I bought my first house, but I did buy one. It was not easy because most realtors did not want to talk to be.
I'm not about to set off around the world in a boat, but that does not mean the 16 yo is not qualified. I don't know here or her experience so I'm not going to say if she should or not. Yes, it certainly has a lot of risk. I just don't see that any of us here can make the assessment as we don't know her, and her abilities, at all.
Just like going to the mall some days.
On Thu, 14 Jan 2010 11:06:17 -0500, the infamous "J. Clarke" scrawled the following:
I'm with you, J. It shows how much the parents trust her and how intelligent they believe she is. It's surely a character builder. But that's not what the Nanny State wants.
OTOH, if (Somali!) pirates do get her, the parents will be _crucified_ in the media.
On Thu, 14 Jan 2010 13:43:25 -0600, the infamous "Leon" scrawled the following:
How is that different from a young couple, an old man, or a middle aged woman on the high seas? Most people on the ocean believe that and pirates take on all comers, regardless of age or gender.
This business of "not driving a car" is local. I had a full driver's license at 16. One can get a pilot's license in the US at 16. Balamurali Ambeti was licensed to practice medicine in the state of New York at 17.
I don't see what age has to do with having experience being chased by pirates. As for being chased by rapers and murderers, one is far more likely to be chased by rapers and murderers on the way to high school than in the middle of the ocean, but if she was 21 or 31 or 41 or 101 she still wouldn't have any relevant experience in being chased by such unless she had phenomenally bad luck. As for "systems failing in a storm", the "systems" in question are ropes and pulleys--it's an effing _sailboat_ for God's sake, technology that was old when Alexander was leading his armies at her age.
------------------------------------------------- The whole pirate thing is a little overblown.
If you bother to read her proposed sail plan, this will be a nonstop, fast as possible given prudent safety issues such as avoiding ice bergs.
(The closer you sail to Antarctica, the shorter the trip, but the higher the risk.)
That route will put her a long way from known piracy activities.
Lew
And winches, stays, tangs, screws, bolts...all manner of things. Bodies too: cuts, scrapes, concussions, broken bones...
Anyone who has ever sailed a boat knows - or had exceptional luck - that systems *DO* fail, storms or not. The wonder is that they do as well as they do.
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