Senhor Ferdinand Magellan says:
"Never send a little girl to do a man's job."
Posted on 06/10/2010 11:11:42 AM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
Abby Sunderland, 16, who is attempting to become the youngest sailor ever to circumnavigate the globe, was feared lost at sea today after her crew lost contact with her boat.
Jeff Casher, an engineer on Sunderland's support team, said two emergency beacons on her boat are now signaling she is in trouble.
Abby's mother, MaryAnne Sunderland, told ABC News that Abby manually activated two beacons around 6 a.m. Pacific Time Thursday.
A beacon designed to automatically go off when it contacts water had not been activated, she said.
Abby was in 20-25 foot waves at the time of last contact, with 35-knot winds, said MaryAnne Sunderland, who is due to give birth at the end of the month. She was shaken but focused on trying to get a rescue effort together.
The closest land to Abby's boat was Reunion Island, which is east of Madagascar. The nearest ship was 400 miles away. Rescuers were trying to contact the ship.
Casher told ABC News that he last spoke with the 16-year-old sailor around 6 a.m. PDT after she had been knocked down twice during the night because of strong winds -- meaning that her sail had touched the water.
One of those knock-downs, Casher said, ripped the radar off the boat. She had been speaking with Casher on a satellite telephone earlier because of engine problems and was in the process of fixing those problems when she told Casher she'd call right back.
She has not been heard from since, except for the distress signals.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Australia.
Amen, we take risks all the time but the unusual risk taken by a brave young lady and her parents get slammed. If she survives I'd be proud to have a son of mine marry an audacious and mature girl like that.
Freedom should be illegal!
No one, anywhere, should be allowed to do anything you disapprove of.
Do you think 12 year olds should be allowed to drive? Sometimes we need laws to protect children.
Why did she have to sail at 16 rather than 18 or 19? The answer is to set a record. How important was that to the parents I wonder. If she set this record then the next shot would be at 15 or 10 or 8!
I put people like this in the same boat (pardon pun) as the lil teen miss pageant parents. Most often it for their own personal aggrandizement. The child is simply a means to that end.
There is a big difference between adults making these decisions and children.
Thanks for correcting me. Good for the brother!
So true..
My grandfather run away from home at 13. By 15 he was supervising a work gang building a railroad. His parents found him at that point! My grandmother was a meterologist in Arctic by the time she turned 17, flying in an open cockpit plane.. the other grandma was driving cattle from Ukraine through half of USSR to Siberia as German army advanced behind. She was 16 at the time.
16 is old enough IF you are old enough! Some people are never old enough..
Yada, yada, yada. Yawn.
Sadly, none, would that I had the resources. I've never been on the Titanic either.
Still missing the point. I’m all for living at the cost of dying.
But...I’m also for responsible parenting. As a parent, I am responsible for my children until they reach age 18. I am supposed to be the voice of reason and good judgement in their lives.
Exactly. Bad judgment by the parents. The girl didn’t know better, but her parents should have. They will have to live with it. Along with the loony-toon “green” advertising sponsors who funded the debacle.
A hundred years ago, 16-year olds were adults, and acted like it.
We are so much better off now that society is populated by Peter Pans.
Senhor Ferdinand Magellan says:
"Never send a little girl to do a man's job."
There is a big difference between trained professionals like the astronauts and a 16 year old kid.
The space program used hundreds of trained people who were the best in their fields. Not so sure about letting kids take such risks just so they can enjoy their 15 minutes of fame.
I can bet you one thing though. The parents will milk any outcome to their advantage. Seems that these kinds of people let their kids do this stuff so they can be in the spotlight for what ever reason.
You can't derive whether or not someone has weighed a risk by the outcome of taking the risk. If nothing had gone wrong, would that prove that they had weighed the risk?
I went diving with my 12 year old off the gulf coast of Florida. We were looking for fossilized sharks teeth.
A non-fossilized teeth filled shark came to investigate.
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