Update: Sailor Abby Sunderland found safe in Indian Ocean
(Reuters) – A 16-year-old California girl trying to sail solo around the world is safe and well after a massive search and rescue was launched in the Indian Ocean when she triggered distress signals, her parents and Australian authorities said Friday.
I am delighted that Abby has been found aboard her dismasted boat and is unharmed. With the immediate crisis over, I wonder how many people will take the lesson to heart. When Vendée Globe racers disappear, we can all accept the fact that having passed the age of majority, the sailors paid their money and took their chances, but in the case of a 16 year-olds, we should be asking ourselves who is really making the decisions that put them in harm’s way.
Like many sailing addicts, I was one of those kids who dreamed of sailing around the world when I was 13 years old and took a very big interest in the 16 year-old, Robin Lee Graham, who with the help of his father, outfitted a Lapworth 24 and set sail around the world. At the time I thought it was the greatest idea imaginable. But something I can’t quite explain, made Graham’s adventure seem different. Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t. The following forum post by maxingout in 2008 captures my feeling.
“Robin Lee Graham inspired me do to my own circumnavigation. The National Geographic articles implanted the dream in my mind, and there was no escape. It’s interesting how, every once in a while, people pop up out of nowhere and influence thousands of lives around the world. Joshua Slocum, Harry Pidgeon, and Robin Lee Graham are good examples.
We live in a day of extreme sports and well-financed adventures. The high performance extreme sportsmen of today discourage me rather than inspire me, because most of what they do are stunts (often highly risky). I don’t aspire to follow in their footsteps, and I have no desire to emulate what they do.
This age of brinksmanship is at the opposite end of the spectrum from people like Slocum, Pidgeon, and Graham. They went about their business in average boats with minimal resources, and they had an excellent adventure. Most of all, they inspired me because what they were doing wasn’t extreme. Their dreams were in the realm of possibility in my own life. One of my favorite quotes from singlehanded circumnavigator, Harry Pidgeon is: “I avoided adventure as much as possible. Just the same, any landsman who builds his own vessel and sails alone around the world will certainly meet with some adventures, so I shall offer no apology for my voyage. Those days were the freest and happiest of my life.”
Long live those sailors who inspire ordinary people to live their dreams.”
Can a clear line be drawn between Robin Lee Graham’s project and Abby Sunderland’s? Probably not. There are many reasons why a 16 year-old may be thrown into the path of adversity and forced to rise to the occasion, but to purposely place a child into harm’s way seems a terrible violation of the trust a child places in an adult parent, guardian, or mentor. I took my own 12 year-old son on a sailing voyage that lasted almost six years — but my wife and I were with him. When it came to passage-making, we “…avoided adventure as much as possible”. Our principal aim was to live as fully as possible in We-Space. As we prepared for departure there where some people who accused us of putting our son in harm’s way.
These are not easy questions to answer. I suppose it’s a matter of judgement, which is after all, a characteristics we attribute to adulthood.
Youngest sailor ever Abby Sunderland feared lost at sea after her crew lost contact with her.
Where Abby is
Sixteen year old Abby Sunderland is alone, cut off, and in trouble, somewhere in the Southern Ocean. Her last reported position was midway between Australia and South Africa. Chances are good that she is alive as I write this, but she living at this moment, in the most remote and inhospitable environment imaginable. Terra firma or even ice, provide a purchase point for human habitation, but at sea there is only the hull of one’s tiny boat or still tinier, a rubber life raft, or nothing but the cold dark sea. The nearest rescue vessel is more than 40 hours away.
No matter where you go or how long your passage, solo sailing is the riskiest of business. It is hard to wrap you mind around the level of exposure you experience in the open ocean. In my experience crossing oceans, the illusion of invulnerability produced by technology — your boat, GPS, radio and Sat-Phone — is a thin veneer that is quickly peeled away by the relentless and impersonal sea. To willingly set sail alone is an act that should be reserved for the most desperate, most mad, or most self-aggrandizing of egotists. Was young Abby any of these?
As a lifelong sailor who has crossed a few oceans, I am not impressed by those who tempt the fates to get their names in the record books. These are the Me-Space people who devote their fortunes and risk their lives to get others to “look at me”. They are not worthy of the title of heroes. Heroes are those who undertake risk selflessly in the interest of others. Heroes live in We-Space not Me-Space. The selfish acts of Me-Space people are intended to make them celebrities. Their aim is nothing more than personal fame and fortune. Their acts of self-aggrandizement are not noble endeavors of the human spirit. These are not people to be emulated as role models.
Abby Sunderland
So what is little Abby doing out there? At 16 years young, I doubt that she was either desperate, mad, or egotistical, but someone, probably the person she most wanted to please, was in a position to influence “her decision” to undertake such a perilous journey.
From ABC News Story, “Abby Sunderland Feared Lost at Sea”
Laurence Sunderland (Abby’s father) schooled Abby in seamanship, testing her, he said, with tougher and tougher solo scenarios through her teens.
And,
“She set out to achieve — a goal as being the youngest person to solo circumnavigate the world nonstop,” said Laurence Sunderland.
When I see this sort of thing and how the media swarms all over it and audiences eat it up, I feel raw anger well up in me. Dammit! We need to start teaching our children to value We-Space over Me-Space. There is enough fame a fortune to go around for those who choose to devote their lives to doing good works — to making a better world. And if fate throws you a curve ball and you are forced to cross an ocean alone, then I will be first in line to shake your hand.
As for innocent Abby, I am thinking about her and hoping with all my heart that she comes through this unharmed.
Good luck to her. She needs it.
She is arguably too young to have appreciated fully the risk. Our grasp on life is fickle and a centimeter here or there can be the difference between living and dying. I don’t think, in the main, 16 year olds from American society understand that. A street urchin from Rio maybe can grasp it, but not Abby. That is why there is an age at which children are not thought to be capable of making informed judgements on their own. I think it’s 18.
I hope she’s found and lives.
I really appreciate the comments about we-space and me-space.
I believe in ‘self-actualization’, in trying to live one’s life to the fullest. However, life isn’t all about us, our dreams, and our accomplishments. Even as we pursue our personal development, we must be mindful of others.
I feel a strong social pressure to speak as if I admire what she did (for example, because she was following her dreams or because it required a great deal of skill and courage). But, I don’t really feel that way. I think that she deliberately put herself and others in great danger for the sake of a vanity mission. I cannot, with conscience, condone that or any part of it. She was in the Indian Ocean at the wrong time of the year because she wanted to break a record, and not one that is really going to be of much use to greater good.
Interestingly, had she been successful, the glory that she seeks would have been all apportioned to her; yet, when something goes wrong for these glory-seekers, it’s up to taxpayers in the rest of the world to bail them out. I’m all for personal choice and adventure, but I think that these people ought to show others some consideration by, for example, taking out a bond/insurance policy for their probable need for an expensive rescue mission.
Very well said!