You may have heard of Jessica Watson, an Australian teen that just finished a round-the-world solo sailing. Her story is impressive and especially interesting because she blogged the entire voyage. (If you're interested in reading just the sailing parts, go to October of 09 and read forward. I'm doing so and am up to December 09.)
This is interesting on a few different levels. Watson is only 16, which is quite young. I can't imagine Relia tackling such a thing a mere 14 years from now. Her parents were confident and they certainly were in the best position to judge. The news articles say that critics were afraid she would die on the trip and that was certainly a possibility. But. She was in constant contact and (worst case scenario) if her boat had sunk, she could have been rescued fairly quickly.
It's amazing how different sailing alone around the world has become. Joshua Slocum first did it in 1895 and news traveled around the world with him. It didn't become competitive until 1968 when a British newspaper offered rewards for the first (and separately the fastest) to do a solo circumnavigation. These men had shortwave radios but were fairly cut off in the Pacific. While out there alone one of them kept imagining that 'all the land had disappeared and he would be forced to sail forever'. Just think of that. To be so cut off that you start to doubt that anything else is left in the world. (Btw, this is a truly excellent book on the 1968 race.)
Watson won't be credited with an official round-the-world trip. She circled the globe but not at a sufficient distance. The old rule was that a sailor must pass through the antipodal point at some time during the trip. Now the rule is based on the orthodromic distance, which doesn't factor in all of the fiddly stuff like tacking. By this rule she sailed some 19,000 miles instead of the 21,600 needed for the rule.
About 2000 miles short . . . but what a trip!
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