Spinnaker Tales – Jessica Watson

by Ian Grant on 12 May 2010 Teenage Sunshine Coast schoolgirl Jessica Watson will claim a deserved place in the history of Globe solo sailing when she sails Ella’s Pink Lady through Sydney Heads on Saturday.

She will become the focal point of a hero’s welcome with all of the waterfront land marks from North Head to the Opera House packed with interested supporters.

Many will stand in disbelief that a young girl who has demonstrated super human courage and determination has achieved her goal to sail over the weather tormented oceans and complete the adventure to become the youngest person to sail alone and unassisted around the World.

The truly remarkable teenager deserves all the applause and recognition for having defied the advice from many experts that she was too young, too small and inexperienced to sail a small and relatively slow yacht around the Globe alone.

A wave of negativity understandably gained momentum after Ella’s Pink Lady suffered extensive damage in a collision with a ship during the first night of the delivery voyage to Sydney.

There were some obvious safety issues that had to be addressed when Jessica steered Ella’s Pink Lady into the Gold Coast City Marina.

Her little yacht with the mast bent and the top half hanging precariously over the side could not have berthed at a better place to have the damage assessed by a group of friendly sailors including Joe Akacich and Graham ‘Scooter’ Egan from Australian Marine Enterprises Pty Ltd and mast builder David Lambourne form David Lambourne Rigging.

Collectively this trio and many others offered their skill and expertise to ensure that Ella’s Pink Lady was re-rigged and restored to be in ship shape condition for Jessica to continue with her mentally and physically demanding solo sailing adventure.

Jessica progressively gained support from numerous positive admirers after she set sail from Sydney last October.
However understandably there were many others including this columnist who held personal concern for the ambitious female teenager.

But day by day over the energy absorbing period of almost seven months Jessica personally answered her critics who had some grave fear on how she would cope.

Those fears associated with the endless demand to safely sail past the notoriously rough and cold land mark of Cape Horn and then maintain the required physical endurance to weather the storm tormented voyage across the inhospitable latitude which separates the friendly and fear factor from safely sailing across The Great Southern Ocean has been successfully recorded in her personal log book.

As her voyage has revealed Jessica is no ordinary teenager showing remarkable courage to successfully complete her achievement of being the youngest person to sail solo around the world alone despite being physically bashed by nature’s elements including numerous fearful ‘knockdowns’ along the way.

Thankfully her facial frown will be replaced with a happy smile and an expected tear on her cheek when she steps ashore and hugs her parents for first time since sailing away almost seven months ago.