Comment On Abby Sunderland's Attempt to Circumnavigate The World Singlehanded

Sixteen year old Abby Sunderland has been rescued in the Southern Ocean. She failed in her attempt to become the youngest person to sail non-stop, single handed, around the world. Having had to stop in Cape Town for repairs, she decide to complete her voyage, even though she wouldn't be setting any records. In the final analysis, Abby's voyage was a stunt. It's true that people have been sailing, single handed, in the open ocean, for a good long time, but most had a heck of a lot more experience than Abby. The real key to understanding Abby's level of comfort and experience was hearing how unnerved she was when she got up one morning, to find that she couldn't get the engine started to charge the batteries for the auto pilot. Gosh. Maybe that cute little solar panel wasn't up to the task. The most critical emergency skills for any open ocean sailor (aside from pure survival), even for relatively short, point to point voyages, would be alternative rigging and self steering arrangements. It doesn't sound like Abby was too strong in the second area. I suspect that Abby never would have undertaken this voyage before the era of GPS, satellite phones, and SARSAT (oh, and, yes, high tech, low drain auto pilots). Can you imagine this voyage thirty years ago, with her parents anxiously awaiting a phone call from a ship's agent, stating that the S.S. "such and such" had passed Abby's boat, that she was fine, and sent her greetings?

There is no chance that sixteen year old Abby could have accumulated enough off shore sailing experience to have undertaken her voyage safely. That doesn't mean that she couldn't complete her voyage. Two teenagers had recently done so, and Abby was off trying to break their "records", but I'd suggest the following. For the experienced mariner, completing such a voyage, in a small sailboat (rather than a large, ocean going sailing vessel), is probably fifty per cent seamanship, and fifty percent luck. Having spent a career at sea in naval vessels, I've seen too many things, natural and man made, that can do-in a small sailboat (yes, even one of sixty or eighty feet). There are floating containers, lumber, logs, steel construction pilings, other miscellaneous escaped deck cargo, whales, ships with negligent or (apparently) non-existent deck watches, large waves, out of synch waves, and the list goes on. A careful inspection of Abby's boat suggests that, while she may have had seamanship skills, to a great extent, she was presiding over a collection of machinery and technology.

On 25 April, Abby wrote in her blog:

"I have some big news today. It's not necessarily good news, but the way I look at it, it's not bad either. I am going to be pulling into Cape Town for repairs thus ending my non-stop attempt. My whole team and I have been discussing whether or not I need to stop ever since my main auto pilot died. It's one thing to sail across an ocean with one well-working auto pilot, it's another to keep going with one that is not at all reliable. It would be foolish and irresponsible for me to keep going with my equipment not working well. I'm about 10-14 days from Cape Town right now and though my auto pilot is working for now, we're all holding our breath and hoping it will last."

Well, that's just fine. She did get the foolish part correct. Perhaps Dad should have bought her a copy of "Self Steering for Sailboats." How about a series of emergency procedures, one of which begins with "the electrical system shorts out." Perhaps she didn't need these procedures, because each one would say the same thing: "Replace with spare" or "activate emergency beacon." It didn't matter; Abby's voyage came to an end due to a dismasting, not due to a breakdown in technology, but her reliance on technology suggests that she might have needed about eighty percent or more luck in her bag of tricks.

So, Abby and her family were smart enough to get paying sponsors for her voyage, and she was brave enough to go to sea alone, but either not smart enough, or not experienced enough to know that she shouldn't have. She's alive because she went to sea in the twenty-first century. The captain of the ship that rescued her got washed into the water during the rescue. The time to unconsciousness in 40 degree F water is about fifteen minutes, so he got lucky, even in a survival suit. How easy do you think it is to rescue someone thirty foot seas? How easy do you think it is to injure someone while trying to fish a person out of the drink in thirty foot seas? Was Abby worth it? It doesn't matter. No mariner will fail to attempt to rescue another mariner in distress. As for Abby's publicity hungry parents - someone should teach them the wicked hard lesson that they were unwilling to teach their over indulged daughter.

Stunt. Bring on the next publicity seeker.