Posted on 06/14/2010 12:04:54 PM PDT by NoLibZone
Here's a dose of reality.
The father of teen sailor Abby Sunderland told The NY Post that he's broke and had signed a contract to do a reality show, "Adventures in Sunderland," about his family of daredevil kids weeks after she set off on her doomed and dangerous solo sail around the globe.
Laurence Sunderland, a sailing instructor who lives in the middle-class Los Angeles suburb of Thousand Oaks with his pregnant wife and seven kids, opened their home to film crews four months ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I’ll act surprised.
I am a conservative and I don’t think ripping people off with using a 16 yr old for a reality show or reniging or not caring about the debts you owe is conservative.
Its anti-social. Its like welfare people who think they got the lottery.
If you really want to do this, put the money up front and don’t EXPECT people to pick up the tab! Its like “I want to make a lot of money, will try a scheme and if it doesn’t work, I will let someone else pick up the tab!”
Disgusting.
A fair point, sir. Though Farragut took a command at twelve, he certainly wasn't alone. There were many seasoned men on that ship well able to see to it that she'd fare as well as possible under any circumstance.
I guess my point in stressing Farragut's "tender age" is that the definition of "adult" has been pushed ever farther up in age over that same 300 year period, and it does not appear that push has served us well. I think that our current attitudes allow people to remain children too long; to not have to apprehend real responsibilities for so long that they becom habituated to not apprehending them, and are therefore quite resentful of reality forceing it all upon them later.
If the reality of inescapable responsibilities were imposed at age fourteen, say, instead of after college graduation at age 21 or 22, that'd be seven less years getting to live without being responsible, seven less years indulging the habits of not having to be responsible, and seven more years building a child into a capable, productive adult. I think the overall change in society would be highly beneficial.
He was promoted to Commander at the age of 40 and then received his first real command.
That's sad.... really sad that her pathetic parents would endanger her life for something like that.
I remember the first time I was given the watch and left in charge of the ship as a young officer. For some reason, everybody else on the bridge was suddenly a Chief or PO. They certainly followed my orders, but if I'd given the wrong order...
If the reality of inescapable responsibilities were imposed at age fourteen, say, instead of after college graduation at age 21 or 22, that'd be seven less years getting to live without being responsible, seven less years indulging the habits of not having to be responsible, and seven more years building a child into a capable, productive adult. I think the overall change in society would be highly beneficial.
I do understand what you are saying, but my perspective is somewhat different. I think the problem is, we're expecting kids to grow up too soon. We're letting them think they can oppose adult decisions and make up their own minds about things before they are ready.
I do believe in kids more responsibility and more opportunities to stretch themselves than most of society seems to do today. But only with adults watching over their shoulders to help them handle the inevitable mistakes they will sometimes make. Yes, we have to give them more responsibility, but that means we also need to keep a firmer hand on the tiller.
At the moment, society denies kids the chance to learn responsibility while they are young and under supervision.
I'm a teacher, and before I became a teacher, I spent a fair amount of my naval career involved in training young sailors and officers. In both those roles, I've seen the kids who grow up to be the 'best adults' are the ones who were encouraged to stretch themselves young, but always to understand that their parents or those in that role, would step in when needed, and when they did, the kids had to listen.
Things like the Scouts (and it's not the only organisation, just the best known one) provide this type of support.
With Abby Sunderland - I wouldn't have let her go, if I was her parents. There's reasonable risks and there are unreasonable ones, and to me, this one was unreasonable. Frankly I think there are a lot of other ways she could have got the same benefits without that level of risk.
Australia seems to find itself constantly rescuing adult solo yachtsmen from the Southern Ocean - I've been involved in two such rescues myself in the 1990s. This is dangerous for anybody, but they made their own decisions and nobody else could stop them. That's not the same situation when it comes to a minor child. Her parents had to make this happen.
Most of the posts on this thread sound like they come from DU.
Reading your articulate post...I am ashamed of my recent post where I ranted about my opinion earlier that I thought these parents were irresponsible.
Yours is a much more reasoned and experienced post. I appreciate that.
At this point I would believe nothing that comes out of Laurie Sunderland's mouth, including "the" and "and".
Om a web page connected with this project, a poster has made a comment about it which is dated 18 October 2009, before she set out, even before they had acquired the boat.
The orginal plan was to set sail next month in a sensible boat, entering the Southern latitudes by October and leaving them before March 2011. Good plan, and the last sensible one they had.
At this time (July 2009) they thought of getting Abby home by April 2011 would make her the youngest solocircumnavigator.
But July 2009 was also the month of the Sydney International Boating Show and articles like With Jessica Watson and Spirit of Mystery At Sydney Boat Show Young girl, with boat looking nearly ready to go, just waiting for weather window. And just by being show neighbours, she convinced Colin Merry and Pete Goss of Spirit of Mystery that she also had the awesome crazy that a long distance sailor needs to succeed (build a replica of a 160 year old Cornish Fishing lugger and sail it from England to Australia around the Cape of Good Hope - yeah that's sensible).
At Thousand Oaks things went crazy (and not awesome crazy). Bad decisions followed. To get Abby the "record", they had to buy a fast race boat NOW, (Jess didn't need to buy a boat, she had convinced another awesome crazy adventurer, Don McIntyre, to lend her one), and hope they could catch up.
They couldn't. 
After Jess made it home, Laurie Sunderland abandoned the timid weather routing Abby had been given before Capetown and sent her down into the Roaring Forties and storms, and her blog posts (tame until now) took on an air of excitement and Hollywood drama - one might almost think they were trying to generate public attention.
Hmm... I think if you zip back through the thread we are in agreement and I was saying to Tabasco basically:
A life unlived is a a life unlived = boring.
Now I will go back through the thread and see if I was agreeing with you. LOL
I am pretty sure I am and Hot Tabasco must sit around in a lounge chair watching Discovery and Military channel.
Yep, start at 139. I think we are in agreement and that girl must be very proficient and talented.
Apparently Hot Tabasco thinks you can only start living at some distant point and age in the future.
Yawn.
You picking on one of my girls?
I wouldn’t she is tougher than you and me.... probably together.
You meant Nazi Land right? LOL
Okay, useless argument because her Daddy gave her permission.
She was experience enough that her father deemed her worthy for the venture and I would say, based on what I read today, that she would died pursuing something worthy.
By the way, I nearly died from swimming to a bouy 1/3 of a mile out. Well, I say nearly died as I was being towed under by the riptide but I knew how to deal with it and ended up swimming 1/2 mile down from where I started.
I also did search and rescue when I was a member of the Sheriff Explorere and was always lead, as I was familiar with the Santa Cruz Mountains and could understand tracks.
I also topped trees at 14, sometimes from a height of 50+ feet. I say 50+ as I wasn’t really measuring so much as guessing how high up I had to climb so to top the tree, so when I cut the actual tree, it would fall safely.
Then again sometimes I would go on a hike and tell my Mom which way I was headed and when I should be back or would be back, as in the next the day, if it got to dark.
I also rode my ten speed down highway 9 to get to work and college 5-6 days a week. If you have never done it I can tell you it is a highway and it it two lanes of winding through the Santa Cruz Mountains.
If you aren’t able to clock at 35mph, probably shouldn’t be on the highway. Trust me. There is no shoulder to ride so cars can pass you.
You are either going as fast or faster than cars or you are a menace to the road.
I would like to say I do a lot of crazy things but most of them don’t seem crazy to me. Just others.
Kind of like going heli-boarding my second year of snowboarding, in the Andes, at 15,000 feet.
I can tell it was a good thing I cracked two ribs and gave myself a concussion the year before in Tahoe.
I immediately became a fan of wearing a helmet.
Well, in Valle Nevado, at probably 14,000 feet, I fell down the side of the mountain some 250 feet. Nothing happened and it was all snow but we all pretty much think wearing a helmet was a good thing that day.
We found out the next day that wearing a helmet was absolutely the smart thing to do, when a friend fell a little further from where I had fallen the previous day.
I really thought as a skier she was going to break a leg but nope. She too was fine. She got up an took an hour traversing to us.
Thing is when we got back to the lodge another friend notice a huge dent in her helmet. It was about 3 inches long.
She took her helmet off and said “I thought I heard something loud”. She was missing a little piece on the back of her ski, where it had probably hit her helmet.
So to you a lot of things look risky.
To many of us, it just looks fun.
Oh and I don’t thing Sailor Abby would have lost both her emergency beacons.
Er yes, and no
"Tony Bulimore"
I'll take Australian joke punchlines for $200, Alex.
Thanks. I hadn’t bothered to read the article and it’s particulars. Most of my commentary had to with my own life experiences.
Now that I find out where she left from and the route, it doesn’t seem to smart, much less informed.
On the other hand if they did know and accepted the risk I am torn.
Who would have believed some guy named Chris wouldn’t fall off the edge of the earth or man would one day walk on the moon(or a soundstage in Arizona, LOL).
With the scant information I have about the route she was taking, I probably wouldn’t do that.
I am not that crazy.
The government was not involved in her parents’ decision. She was not going to war or to save someone’s life. She went so her lazy father could snag a reality TV show. You don’t seem to see a distinction between Abby’s attempt and the Admiral.
I am glad she was rescued but I still believe her parents are irresponsible twits.
The more I hear about this story, the worse it gets.
The guy who built the boat said it was not suitable for this attempt.
Some sailing association refused to sponsor the trip, because they believed the time of year to be too dangerous.
Her electrical charging system was not adequate to keep the autopilot going.
This is not ‘the spirit of America’ on display, here.
I would like to see her dad try the same attempt with the same equipment...based on what knowledgable people have told me, he probably wouldn’t make it either.
Again, there is a fine line between parental rights, and child endangerment. I usually side with the parental rights...and I’m certainly not advocating government intervention in this case...but lets not celebrate these people. We can still shun them without government intervention. I’m sorry, but I have yet to find, in personal discussions or printed word, any person knowledgeable in sailing who thought this venture had more than a 10% chance of success...and since failure means being stranded alone on the ocean, the whole concept boggles my mind.
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