Jessica Watson More Than ‘One Tough Cookie’

What is a 16-year-old Queensland girl doing sailing in a 10-metre yacht alone in the middle of the Southern Atlantic and heading towards the Cape of Good Hope?
Jessica Watson More Than ‘One Tough Cookie’
Jessica Watson is on a voyage of a lifetime to become the youngest person to sail solo, non-stop around the world. (Greg Wood/AFP/Getty Images)
2/19/2010
Updated:
10/1/2015
<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/92115893.jpg" alt="Jessica Watson is on a voyage of a lifetime to become the youngest person to sail solo, non-stop around the world. (Greg Wood/AFP/Getty Images)" title="Jessica Watson is on a voyage of a lifetime to become the youngest person to sail solo, non-stop around the world. (Greg Wood/AFP/Getty Images)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1822852"/></a>
Jessica Watson is on a voyage of a lifetime to become the youngest person to sail solo, non-stop around the world. (Greg Wood/AFP/Getty Images)
SYDNEY—What is a 16-year-old Queensland girl doing sailing in a 10-metre yacht alone in the middle of the Southern Atlantic and heading towards the Cape of Good Hope?

You don’t know? You should! Meet Jessica Watson. She is already over half way through becoming the youngest person to sail solo, non-stop and unassisted, around the world.

Ms Watson set out on her quest through Sydney Harbour heads on October 18, 2009 in her pink, 10.23 metre yacht named Ella’s Pink Lady, among a flotilla of dedicated supporters, sponsors, well wishers and media hype about being too young.

She headed due east and since then, apart from the odd passing container ship, fishing boat and flyovers from an RAF Typhoon Jetfighter near the Falklands (“very cool”), her only human contact has been her Internet connection and radio.

Her voyage will see her sail approximately 23,000 nautical miles (just under 43,000 km) to achieve her goal. To do that, she must depart and arrive from the same port; cross all lines of longitude; cross the equator entering into the Northern Hemisphere at least once and round the southern landmarks of South America and South Africa.

She has already entered the Northern Hemisphere, sailing around the Kiritimati (Christmas) Island atoll at the end of November last year, and has also passed South America’s Cape Horn. She is fast approaching the Cape of Good Hope, also known as the Cape of Storms, and will need all her skills to achieve that and make it across the Great Southern Ocean.

“Over 4000 nautical miles [direct track] of open and often unforgiving seas. Can’t wait. You can have good and bad days in the Southern Ocean, but every one will be memorable,” she says on her blog.

What sort of grit and resilience does it take to achieve a task like this?

Read this extract from her Jan 24 blog entry, which describes a storm she experienced East of the Falklands, “possibly worse than the 1998 Sydney to Hobart Yacht”, with 65-knot winds and 10-metre waves.

“We experienced a total of 4 knockdowns, the second was the most severe with the mast being pushed 180 degrees in to the water ... Ella’s Pink Lady was picked up, thrown down a wave, then forced under a mountain of breaking water and violently turned upside down.

“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. Under just the tiny storm jib, the big electric autopilot did an amazing job of holding us on course downwind, possibly or possibly not helped by my yells of encouragement!”

Steel tubing, inches thick, was bent on her boat during that storm and Jessica was battered and bruised. Her comments?

“It was a little hard at times to maintain my positive and rational thoughts policy, but overall, I think I can say that the skipper held up us well as Ella’s Pink Lady. It was certainly one of those times when you start questioning exactly why you’re doing this, but at no point could I not answer my own question with a long list of reasons why the tough times like that aren’t totally worth it!”

More Than ‘A tough cookie’

Jessica, who lives in the sleepy Sunshine Coast town of Buderim had suffered from severe dyslexia when growing up, her mother Julie Watson told News Limited. Mrs Watson had read her Lion Heart, the story of Jesse Martin, the youngest male to sail solo around the world, and it was this, plus the story of Australia’s Kay Cottee, the first female to achieve the same feat, that set her on her course. She has now sailed up and down the Australian coast, across to New Zealand, to Hawaii and the West Coast of the US to prepare, but it this trip that has realised her true strengths.

She is maturing, says the salty community, remarking on the Sail World website. “There is a vast difference between the young girl who collided with a cargo ship on her first night at sea and the seasoned sailor that remarks in passing: ‘Knowing that everything has been double-checked is the only way to get any peace of mind.’ Yes, Jessica, good thinking.”

Jessica is as her mother describes her: “one tough cookie”, but it is through her blog that we glimpse her delightful honesty and enthusiastic observation of the world around her that indicate other characteristics at play.

In passing the infamous Cape Horn she notes lyrically: “Through my eyes at the time, that distant bit of rock was the most beautiful and incredible thing I’d seen … Mythical and striking pretty much sums it up!”

She describes the dolphins, sometimes a single one that would follow her for miles and other times in their hundreds “chatting away to each other in small squeals and squeaks”. She notes the albatrosses on a calm day: “They have to flap hard to lift themselves off the water, which is very out of character for such graceful birds!” and as the seas get warmer, the flying fish—and the rubbish.

“Along with the flying fish, I’ve been seeing quite a bit of plastic and rubbish floating past recently. It looks so out of place and ugly drifting by on the swell, so I’ve resolved to put a lot more effort into refusing plastic bags and using less plastic when I get home.”

Inspiration

Jessica is over half way now, around 1000 nautical miles from the Cape of Good Hope.

The Cape is an historic mark for Australians, as it is considered the psychological point where ships over the ages have stopped sailing south and turned east on the home run to Australia.

Jessica says she wants to inspire others to pursue their dreams and plans to write a book of her adventure, all the more remarkable for her early learning difficulties.

It is her response to a solo circumnavigation challenge by 16-year-old American Abigail Sunderland, however, that shows the breadth of this truly inspiring young woman.

Abbey, who was also 16, but younger than Jessica, could have broken Jessica’s record within months if she had not been forced to withdraw with faulty equipment weeks after her departure from California, but Jessica offered nothing but encouragement

“Despite the fact that there seems to be a lot of adults determined to see Abby and I pitted against each other as rivals, I only wish her the best of luck and am totally thrilled that there’s another girl going for the record!”

Keep track of Jessica on her blog www.jessicawatson.com.au/ .