jessica watson
i’m like a schoolboy with this jessica watson story. love this kid. and yes, i’m fluent with the arbitrary dicta of the WSSRC and supposed deficiencies of her route, and i know that the state was all up inside her accomplishment from start to finish (including a silver-level sponsorship from the criminal agency calling itself the government of new south wales). i also know her blog entries were likely edited by others before presentation, technology blurs the “unassisted” line, her parents are supposedly wealthy, she’s a “global warming” gulper, she used a self-steering aid, and blah blah blah. oh, and you’re probably sick of her.
some things that kick ass about jessica watson and her adventure:
- she’s intelligent, soulful, enthusiastic, cheerful, artistic, and independent. balls included.
- she was a 16-year-old girl, now 17, who chose to be physically alone for seven months, some of it in the earth’s more desolate places.
- on her first major test voyage she collided with a ship… then didn’t slink off into a corner and disappear. how she handled the collision is alone worth a short book.
- she has a squeaky voice that lulls her detractors into further stupidity.
- she’s unapologetic and supportive of her private sponsors.
- she’s insanely photogenic even though not an overt knockout.
- she rammed one up creepy kevin rudd’s arse.
- her team chose mechanical instead of electrical self-steering, which may be a major reason she succeeded.
- her video clips from the trip are usually more interesting than the average full-length movie.
- sailing rules. sailing solo nonstop “unassisted” around the world jams steady.
her interaction with sailing circumnavigator jesse martin is fun to watch. his 1999 circumnavigation and book/documentary inspired jessica to do her thing, and he supported her energetically, as did solo sailor mike perham, who now apparently asserts boyfriendship to our jess. cool watching those three sail the boat back from the sydney harbour finish line to the dock. also interesting that sailor jesse martin is a far more intuitive interviewer than the career hacks who at the worst times kept shoving their sponsorship in jessica’s face. yes, i know too much about this story. pathetic. it’s a good’n though. hope when the book’s written they don’t obscure her voice in the process.
now i’m going to yap off about the “around the world” controversy:
it’s impossible to sail around the world according to a geometric mind set. the pristine course must bisect the globe (e.g., on the equator, around the poles), holding the line exactly. land, ice, and physics demand massive deviation from that ideal, which then leads to arbitrariness. are antipodes enough? how many pairs? when does the distance requirement become mere sailing in busywork circles?
i agree that crossing the equator’s a minimum absolute criterion, but after that it tends toward dogma. i don’t think a single pair of antipodes makes it unambiguous. i don’t think anything less than all-antipodes (perfect great circle course) is clear, and that’s impossible.
i can dig that walking a 20′ path around the south pole doesn’t qualify for a rollicking celebration of your circumnavigational achievement, but maybe it’s good behavior to not knee-jerk every non-WSSRC-sanctioned ATW trip into pooh-pooh nothingness. look at the course and celebrate accordingly, far from binary fiction land.
last bit, and someone to watch: laura dekker is another independent sailor girl, but one the state’s fucking with in the extreme because of her age (14). goons have inserted themselves beyond parental control, and it sucks heavily. however, even with their interference she may become the youngest solo unassisted ATW sailor.