Jessica Watson survived storm with 65-knot winds Sunday during solo circumnavigation

by Ray Pendleton

Jessica Watson, the 16-year-old Australian girl who cast off 104 days ago from Sydney Harbor on her planned non-stop, unassisted 23,000-mile solo voyage around the world, has passed the halfway mark of her circumnavigation and is now in calmer waters than those she experienced last Sunday.

“The temperature is hardly cold anymore and Ella’s Pink Lady (her 34-foot sloop) and I are now far enough north to avoid the worst of the nasty weather systems to the south (not we couldn’t still cop a storm anywhere),” Watson wrote in her blog yesterday. “So it’s time to start making some serious ground to the east.”

This came as a welcome report to her team back in Australia, as well as those around the world who are following the exploits of this amazing young lady, after reading of her surviving a total of four knockdowns that “pushed” the mast of her boat “180 degrees” into the water.

“Actually, pushed isn’t the right word, it would be more accurate to say that Ella’s Pink Lady was picked up, thrown down a wave, then forced under a mountain of breaking water and violently turned upside down,” she explained.

“With everything battened down and conditions far too dangerous to be on deck, there wasn’t anything I could do but belt myself in and hold on,” she wrote.

Fortunately, other than “a lovely collection of bruises,” minor damage to a solar panel support, a few tears in the mainsail, a bent stanchion, and the cabin becoming a total “disaster zone,” Watson and her vessel weathered the worst storm – so far - of the voyage.

By Tuesday, Watson was showing her youthful resiliency by wishing those back home a happy Australia Day, and congratulating another 16-year-old schoolgirl, California’s Abby Sunderland, for embarking on her solo circumnavigation on Saturday.

Examiner.com