Then what you are saying is, experience and maturity is meaningless. I find this hard to believe. A 16 year old is still a 16 year old. The parents said before this sail, their daughter never even wanted to take the dog for a walk by herself. Sure, I know there is always someone who comes along with that special ability, the knack, the talent. But these are the rare ones. There are now a whole host of kids wanting to sail around the world. A 13 year old is now going to attempt this. I am sorry, but where do you draw the line on this kind of foolishness? At 12? !0? If sailing is so easy that a child can do it, then why should we consider any of them heroes? Why is the ocean considered dangerous at all?
No. What I said is that you should judge everyone on their own merits.
You’re the one suggesting that all 16 year olds are the same. By dint of being only 16, there is something physical and insurmountable that would make the idea of putting any of them at risk a bad idea.
I hope you aren’t asking me to draw some sort of line, because I won’t. I don’t believe a line should be drawn.
Most lines draw themselves. If some 13 year old wants to sail solo, and the sailing community thinks its suicidal, believe me someone will say something about it.
In this particular case, nobody hops in a dinghy and decides to sail the globe. It takes a load of cash, tons of planning, visa applications, equipment, provisions, etc. She didn’t ‘run away from home’.
I’ll tell you this - the bulk of the people who’ve ever lived have done exactly zero point zero in terms of pushing the boundaries of human knowledge or endeavor.
It is only the rare, the exceptional, and the special who have expanded the envelope of knowledge, endurance, experience - and they in most cases gave all, or nearly all, in pushing those boundaries.
Newton was among the most brilliant, and even he admitted that if he had seen things others had not, it was because of those that came before with the courage to devote their every waking breath to the solving of such puzzles.
Were it not for the freaks. . .
I NEVER said maturity was meaningless. Nor did I say experience was meaningless. On the contrary, I gave you the example of the 41 year old stock broker - he had neither maturity nor experience. He was simply 41 years old. Some people think that age magically bestows on you abilities and capacities on otherwise ordinary people.
It doesn’t. This wasn’t this girl’s first time in a boat.
Perhaps you missed the bit about the 50 foot seas, or that she was online an hour before losing the call, and that within an hour of losing the call, her EPIRB was detected by satellite.
She was ready. She had the equipment.
Captain stockbroker - I guarantee you, was likely sailing naked (who’s watching, right), listening to Buffet, had a couple of drinks (we found the cans), and probably got knocked off the boat by the boom during some surprise tack. We found his spanking new floation device and EPRIB in the cabin.
I hope it inspires other kids. Most, if not all, would not be up for it, and somebody will point that out to both parent and child. In the end, the effort won’t be underwritten or endorsed.
Kids SHOULD WAKE UP to the fact that they may have extraordinary buried within them, and not be afraid to commit to finding and developing it.
The Cub Scouts sums this all up nicely: Do Your Best. Some people’s bests are better than everybody elses, regardless of age.