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13 years ago
O/T: Abby Sunderland Rescued!
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13 years ago
Lucky for her and her parents.
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13 years ago
Lucky, indeed. I have to confess I did breathe a sigh of relief when they found that kid.
In the end though, she did get what she wanted. Attention, attention, attention.
Her parents will get the same. Now there will be a "heroic" twist to the story, which will no doubt be much more bankable than if she made it. I can already see Oprah asking the parents "what they were thinking" and listening to them reason out they weren't the type of parents to be dreams stealers.
I can imagine the talk show hosts asking her if she was ever scared, while displaying her book on the desk.
They better get cracking, though. There is another young girl ( is there ANYTHING fully empowered children can't do these days? ) that wanted to do the same trip at 13. The Dutch courts where she lives blocked her try. (Dream stealing bastards... she even told them it was her lifelong dream... )
She has since run away from home with her boat to try, but without the millions of dollars of gear and logistic provided to Abby, didn't get too far.
She has proudly announced that it is a matter of time, and once she gets it back together, she will board "The Guppy" and make another attempt. No one will steal the dreams of that now 14 year old girl.
Sadly for Abby, if she makes it the Dutch girl will eclipse ALL the attention Abby will enjoy. After Abby blowing her horn about staring down her fears, waiting heroically to be rescued, and mastering her emotions while waiting for rescue, in the end she has just wrecked a very expensive boat.
Almost making achieving that goal is the same as almost winning the Super Bowl, almost winning the World Series, almost winning the Stanley Cup. Soon, no one will remember her name.
Although.... there is an alternative to the attention they crave. Surely I can't be the only one to remember the parent/child combo that tried to fly across the USA in a plane. It was always that child's dream to fly across the USA, for all of her seven years on this planet.
To earn her dream title, the 7 year old had to take off and land the plane. She was an inspiration to small children everywhere, classes followed her on television, she was covered by the morning shows that charted her progress. Girl Power was a wonderful thing to see, no doubt. Little girls everywhere were inspired to do all kinds of wonderful things.
Then she crashed the plane and killed both her Dad, herself, and a flight instructor. BUT - now they indeed have a valid, permanent place in the record books.
They even created the impetus in Congress to pass a law that will keep others from challenging their record, as it makes it illegal in the USA to have children that young fly. How many people can inspire actual binding laws? So their efforts will always be a part of history.
Mission accomplished.
Ted Koppel had this to say: (from Time magazine)
it in the tragedy. On Nightline, Ted Koppel spoke for the network when he s= aid, "We need to begin by acknowledging our own contribution...We feed one = another: those of you looking for publicity and those of us looking for sto= ries." Then he posed the question of "whether we in the media...by our rave= nous attention contribute to this phenomenon," and answered it himself: "We= did."
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13 years ago
The aforementioned self-aggrandizement which irritating as hell aside, the thing that bothered me about this whole escapade was that apparently ignored sound advice to arrange departure to avoid being where she was during the heavy weather season. No excuse for stupidity imo...
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13 years ago
wrote
Yes, that says a lot.
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13 years ago
The courts handed the Dutch government their asses on that one--they're not going to be able to block her again.
Not really. Dekker is not going for a nonstop, unaccompanied circumnavigation--she's going port-to-port in company with another boat.
Dekker may end up the youngest solo circumnavigator, but Jessica Watson remains the youngest nonstop solo circumnavigator.
And the boat isn't particularly "wrecked" or particularly expensive. Needs a mast and some rigging and probably some sails. One sail (not one trip, one fabric assembly used for propulsion) on a competitive maxi-boat costs more than her entire attempt.
That's a nice fiction, but in fact what killed them was an overloaded plane at a high density altititude in bad weather. There's not even any real reason to believe that the kid was flying the plane--she had a flight instructor sitting next to her with a full set of controls. Chuck Yeager may not have been able to pull that one out.
Not quite. It's illegal for anyone not holding a private license or better and a valid medical to manipulate the controls in "any record attempt, aeronautical competition, or aeronautical feat".
in the tragedy. On Nightline, Ted Koppel spoke for the network when he said, "We need to begin by acknowledging our own contribution...We feed one another: those of you looking for publicity and those of us looking for stories." Then he posed the question of "whether we in the media...by our ravenous attention contribute to this phenomenon," and answered it himself: "We did." Read more:
And if she pulls it off, then what?
This business of treating kids as something other than miniature adults is recent.
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13 years ago
snip
Fear not. In this empowering, vapid, society of attention seekers, there will be others to pick up the slack Abby left on her trip. Since there is no glory in simply sailing around the world (defeating the well hashed quote "I sail for the love of sailing") I doubt she will try again if no TV cameras are present. I don't know how interested she would be in doing that for nothing other than the enjoyment, even if was her lifelong dream.
Can't wait until we have our very own 10, 12, or 13 year old from the USA trying that again. After all, if they can climb mountains, wouldn't it be a double standard to prevent someone that young from trying another sailing record?
Robert
Fear not, I am sure the Chinese are already working on a 10 year old completing the task and she will be presented as a 16 year old. ;~)
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13 years ago
Using the same boating comparison logic instead of an actual dollar, it was not as expensive as an aircraft carrier (a very expensive boat), or and nuclear submarine, or even just the super sized personal yachts such as the Dubai.
The used Open 40's (not to be confused with the Class 40's) of that vintage seem to be in the area of $425,000 to $450,000. The Anasazi Girl seems to be almost as fully equipped as Abby's but seem to be missing the pricey (OK, to me) auto pilot features, etc. There are two Open 40's for sale here:
Link to the LA Times article:
You will probably say severely damaged.
Although I could not find the exact article, I read that the cost of her refitted and fully updated electronics package was about $600,000. This was in a interview that was done before she took off.
So say it was only worth $500,000. I guess in today's brave new world of "billions" for everything imaginable, a casual 1/2 million tossed away isn't much.
Still, no matter how I try to be an expansive thinker, a half million dollar toy is expensive to me.
YMMV.
Really? What part is fiction? Don't you remember the news coverage she got? School kids charted her progress, teachers made maps, etc., to show how she was doing. There are still articles on the 'net that talk about her classmates following along.
She constantly wore her pink "Girls Fly" cap while going on her trip.
In fact, the day they crashed, they had just left a large group of reporters that were eagerly relaying every scrap of information they could get. Every minute of her flight was covered for all to see.
And of course they did crash.
You aren't saying the Dubroffs would pull a fast one are you? Surely Jessica was flying...
In fact, there are a great deal of statements from fellow fliers and colleagues of Reid that think he was not flying. It may be loyalty to him, but they say that he was simply too good and too experienced as a pilot to crash under challenging, but not impossible conditions.
The litany of mistakes made by the CPIC was long enough I hope the child was flying and not Reid.
Bottom line; we'll never know.
I am thinking of a mother nursing a newborn going on the next moon shot so her child can claim it was the youngest to go to the moon.
Only to be topped by a fetus in suspended animation to go to Mars and back.
For me, I would add that the business of exploiting your kids for your own gratification is nothing new.
Robert
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13 years ago
So, a car with a flat tire is a wreck to you?
The reason it cannot be salvaged is a matter of where it is located and what would be involved in trying to tow it to civilization. If it was 100 miles off shore, someone would salvage it.
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13 years ago
It remains to be seen whether she ASKED to be rescued.
She may be like the 101st Airborne at Bastonge when George Patton drove up: "Who invited you to the party?"
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13 years ago
HeyBub wrote: ...
???
Demasted in high seas halfway between Africa and Australia and you think there was a choice to be made????
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13 years ago
Lucky, indeed. I have to confess I did breathe a sigh of relief when they found that kid.
In the end though, she did get what she wanted. Attention, attention, attention.
Very well put - all of it.
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13 years ago
No, no, you got that backwards ...
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13 years ago
She lit off her emergency beacons. That is Asking. If you say 'Nevermind!' when rescuers shows up they tend to get really honked!
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13 years ago
Nope. She activated TWO emergency signaling devices (EPIRB) MANUALLY.
That's how you ask to be rescued at sea.
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13 years ago
I found the ad a while back in which the owner of the boat at the time was asking something like 120K. Can't find it now though.
That she killed anybody.
I remember a lot of news coverage. However if you find the NTSB report they concluded that the cause of the crash was not an inexperience pilot but an overloaded aircraft at a high density altitude. Of course the newspapers know far more about the causes of plane crashes than the professional accident investigators, so we should always believe the newspapers.
Which has no relevance at all to the truth of the notion that her piloting skills or lack of same were the cause of the crash.
If I wear a hat that says "Barack Obama" does that make me President?
It was? So how many reporters died in the crash and where is the footage showing her at the controls as it progressed? Sorry, they didn't "cover every minute of her flight". The covered her arrivals and departures but really had no idea what was going on in the cockpit at any given moment.
So did this 2000 hour pilot, for the same reasons:
Doesn't matter who was flying. Damned few pilots are good enough to pull a save under those circumstances.
What makes you think that the conditions were not impossible? If you look at the above video you'll see a pilot with more experience than Reid lose it under the same conditions.
There were, according to the NTSB, three mistakes. 100 pounds overloaded, high density altitude, and bad weather.
But you'd rather believe the newspapers and the opinions of people who were not there and did not investigate the crash over the findings of the crash investigators.
In 1920 you would have said the same thing about a mother nursing a newborn flying across the Atlantic. Now it's an everyday occurrance.
Sure, who wants to be stuck with a squalling baby on a spaceship for two years?
Yeah, right, every time a kid decides to do something it's because the kid was being exploited by somebody. Never occurs to you that the kid may be doing something that was his or her own idea.
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13 years ago
Yup--the downside of EPIRBs is that once one triggers, if your radio's out there's no way to stop the search until somebody finds you and "rescues" you.
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13 years ago
Yep, rig a jury mast and creep to the nearest land. Bligh had a lot less to work with than she did and a far less capable hull under him and yet he made it as far as she needed to go.
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13 years ago
Did she light them off or did they light themselves off? They are designed to self-activate in an emergency you know.
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13 years ago
Isn't the aircraft takeoff weight the responsibility of the pilot? Seems only an inexperienced (incompetent) pilot would risk others' lives on an overloaded plane.
See above.