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Well it seems there is now a young lady pushing off from Australia to make her attemt to sail around the world none stop. Jessica Watson - Youngest Around the World Sailing Attempt should be interesting to follow as there has been lots of preparation and such. I wish her the best and a safe sail.
I'm both impressed by and happy for this young lady, and relieved that she's made it this far. She may be looking at 40+ knots here shortly, I hope she can avoid it but it's nothing she can't handle.
Yes I know she has never claimed to be out to officially break the record but to muck up the distance travelled seems inexcusably careless.
Some wag in this morning's Sydney Morning Herald has suggested she should go round Fort Denison (a small island in Sydney Harbour) a couple of thousand times which will give her the necessary miles.
As someone who works in the Media here in Sydney, I have been following this story pretty closely as it becomes bigger and bigger news locally with her impending arrival around the corner, and well I still don't quite know what the go is.....
The record she is trying to break, firstly is unbreakable after 'the youngest ever' record was officially stricken from the books amongst the controversy of Laura Dekker last year. The record remains held by Jesse Martin, and will be forever......regardless of how far Jess sails.
Secondly those in her camp also claim to have been aware of the distance technicality all along....however don't seem to have a good answer as to why she didn't comply with it, you think they would of if for no other reason than to stop this kind of controversy....
At the end of the day, it seems silly though to say that she hasn't sailed enough miles to break the record that officially she can't break anyway....
So what remains is that a 16 year old girl wisely or otherwise has sailed a 34ft yacht around the world. For that my hat is off to her.
As an aside, I had occasion to speak to her a couple of times before she left, albeit fleetingly and as a person she does impress me.
I don't have the links/quotes at hand, but yeah early in her blog she was fairly clear about setting out to 'break the record'.
To take nothing away from what she has done, there seems to be some very confusing rhetoric coming from her camp......Oh and I always get worried when I hear the words.....book deal and manager....
She did so it, she circumnavigated alone, and she's in an elite club. I think it was said that more people have gone to the moon than have done what she has done. She deserves that credit.
As for SailWorld? Screw them.
As for the the naysaying pikers who pick at the technicalities of what she has done, screw them too.
As for her PR team, yeah, them too.
I'll bet not a one of them has done this and never will.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” -- Teddy Roosevelt
Today my wife and I went down and watched Jessica Watson sail into Sydney Harbour along with literally tens of thousands of other people who felt inspired enough to give up a Saturday to witness and honour the achievement of a 16 year old girl. It was somewhat of a spectacle. There were speeches by our Prime Minister, every TV station in the country covered the homecoming and the harbour was literally packed with boats.
When all is said and done, when the controversy is silent and the bulldust has cleared.....what is left is that she is a remarkable girl who has done a remarkable thing. This is what I think today captured my nations heart, it made us think about the things we could all do and could all be.
I cried today...I absolutely balled my eyes out as I watched this 16 year old girl sail into my beautiful harbour having done what I have not yet had the courage or conviction to attempt in my 30 years of existence.
The entire ****e storm that has erupted around JW and the record thing really gets my goat. Scott (StillRaining) emailed me about and this is how I replied (extract)...
"The controversy over the record which has been portrayed by some as SailWorld being mean spirited could have been easily avoided had her PR wallah not been an utter sleazebag and her tacticians morons. Ignoring whether the record exists officially or not, they simply failed to read the rules or chose to ignore them. Then, they tried to shift the blame onto a journalist who had pointed their mistake out to them off the record and early enough, for them to have corrected it. A simple case of lets shoot the messenger. The fact that her PR people had also blatantly stolen the logo of the Pink Lady Apple Corporation does suggest they have the moral integrity of a band of stoats."
The SailWorld Journo has been in my opinion unjustly accused of being somehow jealous or envious of JW's achievements yet in every way she is factually correct and the JW team were told well in advance that the course JW was sailing did not cover the requirements for an around the world record.
Now personally I could not give a flying fluck whether she has set any records or not. She did circumnavigate and she did it in fine style. Sure as hell I wish I had the cojones to have done it at her age or indeed to do it now. A splendid achievement no doubt at all but crucifying the journo for simply telling the truth and correcting an error is something I do not understand or accept.
I seem to remember Tania Aebi having to go through the same stuff after her circumnavigation, people saying that she had not set a record because she gave a friend an 80 mile ride from one island to another during her trip. Who cares. The people who make up these rules probably never even do any significant sailing, and as far as I'm concerned Tania Aebi set a record, and so did Jessica Watson. Whether she gets recognized by one organization or another doesn't even matter to me, she did it her way.
Edit - Moitessier didn't even bother finishing the first non-stop around the world race, he got close to the finish line and just kept on sailing until he got back to Tahiti, but nobody says he didn't do well in that race!
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