Look, there is a REASON why Everest has a “climbing season” and even professional mountain climbers and sherpas will NOT take people up in December. There is a REASON.
There is a REASON why even professional crews on corporate sponsored multi-million dollar ocean racers don’t do the Southern Ocean in winter. There is a REASON.
The only REASON “Abbey16.com” was sent by her parents in a big rush to get out the gate, without such critical basics as a non-electric windvane self steerer was TIME. She was going to “age out” of being “Abbey16.”
So her parents threw her life onto the craps table in a grab at fame and $TV$ deal$.
If it was about the sailing, they would have waited for the correct season for the Southern Ocean, and at LEAST she would have also had a quality non-electric windvane for steering.
(But you can’t just walk into West Marine and walk out with a windvane and slap it on your boat and go. It takes a few weeks to adapt it to your yacht, since all transoms/wheels differ, and tweak it until it’s “right.”
Abbey’s media-whore parents didn’t have time for that! So they sent her out in a rush (Abbey16 is aging fast!) with only one electric autopilot, which burned out before Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. So they put on two more. But if one burns out, so with the replacements. Especially when you get into gales and big waves, when the force loads on the struggling autopilot motor increas exponentially.
And a solo sailor in the Southern Ocean, with no self steering (wind vane or electrical autopilot) will tire in less than one day in storm conditions. Even a pro sailor in his prime.
And once fatigues past the point of being able to steer to EVERY wave, the boat WILL broach, flip, and dismast.
And that’s what happened. That’s what every sailor could tell you would happen. And that’s why even pros in million dollar racers DON’T DO THE SOUTHERN OCEAN IN WINTER.
Ditto EVEREST IN WINTER.
Abbey’s parents sent her out, unprepared, for a winter rendesvous with the Southern Ocean, for one reason only: her age meant value to them.
More than her life.
There’s a REASON why guns should be banned too.
And people make awful bad decisions in the thrall of bad motives, like greed, lust, fame. So let’s REGULATE more. We need statists standing over our shoulder in EVERY aspect of life, protecting us!
Travis, you are trying to use reason with people who want to argue from their emotions. They know nothing of voyaging in small boats in dangerous waters and the preparations that are prudent. I’m sure that based on the average California high school girl, Abby was the best sailor in the area. That still does not mean that she should have been in the Indian Ocean in the Southern winter.
Our wild ride down in that latitude was in December - the end of spring, beginning of summer and it was EXXXTREMELY exciting! We also went south as far as Hobart Tasmania after Christmas - their summer. The Tasman sea lived up to its reputation!
Gambo was bought by men who wanted transportation to get to glaciers so they could make use of “grant money” to study glaciers. They were not sailors at all! But Gambo was practically a self-sailing yacht - by a superb designer - and it has been in use for years now going to Alaska, the Antarctic, New Zealand and Iceland. I’m sure that Abby’s yacht was extremely user friendly, and that she was knowledgeable, as far as her parents could teach her.
It was their failure to look at reality that put Abby in the situation which ended in her rescue.
It strikes me as the equivalent (in Arizona) of my sending my daughter out to hike the AZ/Mexican border, to become the ‘youngest person to hike the MX/AZ border’ - AND doing it in summer, because waiting for winter would cost her the record.
And wanting her to do it with minimal water, because water jugs aren’t available in time, etc.
Stupid. And stupid is not heroic. Just stupid.