I will admit I was a bit uneasy when I first heard her parents were allowing her, a sixteen year old, to embark upon a solo round-world sailing trip. But I figured she deserved the chance to try, and that I really wasn't in any position to say whether she was capable of it or not.
Since she's arrived back, many people seem unable to say "congratulations" or "good work". They are only interested in tearing down her achievement and criticising her family and support team. What happened to good old fashioned Aussie mateship and support? It's taking tall poppy syndrome to its ugly extreme.
Of course it was a dangerous endeavour. But we let 17 and 18 year olds drive on our roads, where they frequently get themselves - or others - into crashes, sometimes killing themselves, or somebody else. Just in the last few days, a 19 year old P-plater killed another driver when he was trying to overtake a semi-trailer on a highway. I've heard no criticism of his dangerous driving, despite the fact he killed someone when he was on the wrong side of the road. At least Jessica Watson was posing no threat to anybody else.
Yes, she may have gotten into trouble and required rescue. That does not make her 'selfish' as some have claimed. In fact, her family said they would pay for any rescue that might be necessary. But wouldn't the possible need for rescue make anybody who gets into a car selfish, because they may require a fireman to cut them free of a car wreck or a paramedic to resuscitate them? Wouldn't it make every solo sailor selfish?
I don't think anybody would know better than her sailing mentors and teachers whether she was capable of making the trip, and so nobody other than them had the right to tell her parents whether they should or shouldn't let her go.
So many people were saying "what if she drowns" "what if her boat gets knocked down and she can't right it" "What if she loses her food/water" "what if her emergency beacons fail" "what if she gets psych problems from being alone for so long" (I honestly had someone say that to me)etc .
The thing is, a lot of things would have had to go wrong at once for her life to be seriously threatened, and those things can happen to a sailor of any age. The boat she used is the most popular model for solo round-world trips because it is so easy for 1 person to operate (relative to any other boat) plus it rights itself after knockdowns so well. I heard someone describe it as a cork - it gets knocked down and just pops back up again. Her emergency beacons were in perfect working order - one went off during a kockdown south of Australia (she had to call her team to reassure them it was a false alarm and she was fine). If her fresh water filter failed and she was unable to fix it, I'm sure she would have pulled into a port somewhere and forfeit her attempt rather than risk her life.
She learnt from her mistakes. After her run-in (pardon the pun) with the tanker off the Queensland coast, she set herself a fatigue management routine and got her boat a new proximity alarm. She had set her proximity alarms before she went to bed that night, but she didn't wake up when they went off to warn her of the approaching tanker. So she installed a new, louder alarm.
I find it appalling that people are accusing her of doing it - and her parents allowing her - just for the money. She turned down a $250,000 deal from a women's magazine to cover her 17th birthday party tonight. She was just a teenage girl with a dream to sail around the world, and she worked hard for 3 or 4 years to make that dream come true. Kevin Rudd and Kristina Kenneally, of course, had to jump on the bandwagon and make a big public spectacle of her return so that they could cash in on the photo ops, but that was not Jessica's plan.
She doesn't care if her achievement is not recognised as an official record. In fact, she knew before setting out that it wouldn't be because she was under 18. She doesn't care if some people don't think she 'officially' circumnavigated the world. She feels she did, and that's all that matters to her.
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