But Mom, he got to sail around the world!

I remember similar outrage here when this story came out in The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/sports/20climber.html. Oh, wait, that's right, there wasn't any.

 

The minute the kid got in the boat .... stop her and charge the parents.

This is total freaking insanity. If she was lost at sea for a hours, that means no one was tracking/following/accompanying her.

 

I certainly wouldn't let my kid sail around the world. My theoretical kid. But at the same time, having grown up in a farming community, and having known kids who died while operating tractors or got caught in grain bins, I don't think you can just say the parents are being reckless and ridiculous. Farm accidents happen all the time. Parents know this. Yet they have their kids out there working on the farm, basically sending them into a situation where there's a chance they could die. Does that mean they should be arrested for endangerment? Obviously not.

Again, I think these types of events are fairly dumb - these kids aren't exactly Charles Lindbergh - but I don't think it's black and white.

 

I don't recall a thread being started on many things. Doesn't mean sj members either condone or condemn them.

Next.

 

I think the difference lies within the reason/risk ratio. A farm kid working on a farm is likely doing so because that's how the family earns its living, and the percentage of accidents — I would think, tho I don't have the stats to back it up — are miniscule. Our sailor was doing it for nothing other than vanity, either hers or shipbuilding dad's, and sailing into seas that regularly claim lives. Major risk, no reason.

EDIT: BTW, she ain't out of the woods yet. She's got a day until the boats arrive, and she's still being thrown around 30-foot seas in a dismasted boat. Hope all of this isn't premature jocularity.

 

I don't think anyone forced her to go.

There are many things I'd do if I thought I could.

She wanted to do it and thought she could. She prepared herself, and she did it.

How many things in life are there about which all of us adults, unfortunately, cannot say that?

They don't even have to be big things. But, how many? That's what compels this kind of living and oftentimes is the impetus that drives these kinds of things, and I have a hard time condemning it, or even discouraging it, given the right people and circumstances.

This girl did the sort of thing that, at the end of our lives, a lot of us might say we would have liked to do. Only she won't have to say that.

 

He did not do that alone. He was part of a team, along with gasp ... his father.

 

My issue here is that nobody opining that this is a major risk has any basis for that opinion, they are just reacting on pure, gut emotion. The parents judged the risk to be minimal because of her experience and training, and to this point they appear to be vindicated. Bring me a sailing expert saying how dangerous it is, and I'll buy it. People on message boards gasping about how clearly dangerous it is? I'm not impressed yet.

 

Badwater?

 

Nah, nothing dangerous about this. She's perfectly safe... provided she survives for another 30 hours or so.


The mariner from Thousand Oaks, Calif., who had been attempting to become the youngest person to have sailed around the world alone, had lost has mast and rigging after her vessel apparently rolled in heaving seas. Her position is extremely remote, more than 2,000 miles from Australia and Africa.

A rescue has not been made, however. The nearest ship bound for her position is about 30 hours away, but fierce winds and seas that had been upwards of 40 feet are abating. Australian, American and French search-and-rescue authorities are cooperating in the rescue attempt.

 

Devil, what are the odds of Phil Mickelson dying near the end of an attempted circumnavigation of the globe. (Sorry, couldn't resist)

And you can't win your argument with BTE. Talk of young people and death doesn't faze him.

 

Especially if they die at sea doing what they love.