Letters
Enough Stunt Sailing Circumnavigating Isn’t Child’s Play
Remember when circumnavigators
were crusty, old salts? They’d just decide to head out and you wouldn’t
see them for a few years until they just showed up back on the dock. No fanfare, no crowds, no TV, just a few fellow sailors and family. They went for the love of it.
The best comment I’ve ever heard was from a sailor years ago who, after a few years of sailing from the east coast of the U.S., around Cape Horn, up into the Mediterranean and was staying in Spain for a while, was asked, “Are you planning on sailing back to the U.S. to complete your circumnavigation?” He replied, “No. I may do it, but if I say I’m going to, that’s too much pressure. If it happens, it happens.” Today’s reality seems to be different. It all about the record. After a cooperative search by the American, French and Australian Search and Rescue authorities, 16 year-old Abby Sunderland was rescued after her boat was dismasted in the Indian Ocean. Okay, I’m going to be as broad-minded as I can be and say, okay, that can happen to anyone. But then, when you consider that no sailor in their right mind would set sail into winter weather in that part of the world, the broad mind starts to narrow. Now it has come to light that her parents planned to cash in by selling the rights to her voyage as an “inspirational reality show.” The mind now snaps shut with all compassion vanished. Actually, I shouldn’t say that. I do feel for a child whose parents would knowingly put her in danger for publicity and money. Risking a child’s future for possible fame and fortune is criminal. No wonder the deal fell through because, “The networks didn’t want to touch it because of the very thing that happened,” said Susan Hartman of the Sydney Morning Herald. “They (networks) were afraid she was going to die.” Maybe someone should have heeded American Sailing Association’s executive director Charlie Nobles who said they had chosen not to sponsor Abby because, “We did have concerns about the timing of her departure.”
It’s been suggested that sponsors of such stunts as this should pick up the tab for rescues. The argument against this is that these events provide valuable opportunities for the rescue agencies to practice. What practice, this is the real thing! And what about the dangers you put the rescuers in? Bad things don’t usually happen in good weather. Just last week a Dutch court ruled again to not permit a 14-year-old girl, Laura Dekker, to do a solo circumnavigation. This decision backs up a decision a year ago to not let her go at 13! She then ran away to the Caribbean to try and get a boat. Note her name, we haven’t heard the last of her.
Notice I haven’t mentioned anything about competence. I don’t doubt these girls are competent, even very good sailors under normal conditions. But it seems that all common sense has gone out the window. The record is everything. We’re talking real life here. This is not reality TV, it’s reality.
Editor 48° NORTH, JULY 2010 PAGE 11 Volume XXIX, Number XII, July 2010
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