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<p>You are making my point. Abby had a specially designed boat for solo open ocean sailing. Redundancy in the locator safety equipment. She had training and safety devices and procedures. It all worked when a storm took out her mast.</p>
<p>Open sea rescues are part of ocean travel. For all boats. Abby had food and a heater. All went well. The rest is “what if.”</p>
<p>[Deprecated</a> Browser Error](<a href=“http://www.uscgboating.org/about/facts_faqs_and_org_charts.aspx]Deprecated”>http://www.uscgboating.org/about/facts_faqs_and_org_charts.aspx)</p>
<p>link works</p>
<p>On an average day, the Coast Guard:</p>
<p>Conducts 109 Search and Rescue Cases.
Saves 10 lives
Assists 192 people in distress.
Protects $2,791,841 in property.
Seizes 169 pounds of marijuana and 306 pounds of cocaine worth $9,589,000.00.
Processes 238 Seaman licenses and documents.
Investigates 6 vessel casualties involving collisions, allisions, or groundings</p>
<p>So every year the US coastguard alone saves 3650 lives.</p>
<p>07Dad, you can call it “what ifs” but the “what ifs” were quite realistic ones. For instance, when they lost communication and knew that she had set off the beacons, they feared she was in the water. Obviously, this was a real threat and possibility. In such an instance, 2000 miles from land and 48 hours from help would be catastrophic, let alone in high stormy seas. Another thing is that Australia was willing to send out a plane, not the Coast Guard (or Australian equivalent) as she was so far from any boats. She was lucky they did this. As you can see, the fishing captain fell into the water. It was a dangerous situation. She also had lost communications. Yes, her stars aligned that she was saved. The “what ifs” are real and significant.</p>
<p>Had a chance to look at the specs on her boat. Spoke to my friend who is a Coast Guard licensed captain, owns a 54 ft blue water performance cruising sailboat, who makes multiple crossings a year from the east coast to the Caribbean and with whom I’ve done my crossings. He has also sailed on boats in the same design class as this girl’s. He confirmed my impressions.</p>
<p>Abby’s boat was an ultra light displacement ocean racer displacing (weighing) about 40% of what a typical well performing, similarly sized cruising sailboat displaces. It had a very flat and shallow hull configuration shaped for speed and made of ultra light weight hi-tech materials. The keel weighed about 25% of what you would find on a cruising boat and the boat relied on water ballast in 2 tanks for stability. The manufacturer touts its ability to right itself after turning over 180 degrees and cites that it has 5 water tight compartments and there is an aft escape hatch. The mast was deck stepped, relying entirely on the rigging for its strength and stability. The engine was an 18 horsepower inboard, about 24% of the power of a typical 40 ft modern cruiser and good for essentially nothing more than charging the batteries and maneuvering at the dock.</p>
<p>Bottom line, it was a boat designed for one thing and one thing only - speed - and on the razor’s edge of pushing the materials and structural design to the limits of safety for the materials used and the conditions anticipated. All the system redundancies, all of the tricked out features belie the fact that this is a boat built for a type of racing where knockdowns, capsizing and mechanical failure are accepted “everyday” risks and the nature of the boat itself enhances the inherent risks presented by the ocean.</p>
<p>You can argue all day long about the prudence of allowing a kid to do a solo sail around the world but to do it the way this was done, in my view, is just nuts and strongly suggests that Abby’s safety was secondary to other considerations whether the parents want to admit it or not.</p>
<p>That’s the thing…speed was important to them due to trying to break the “youngest” record and another young girl was also vying for that at the same time. If it was about pure adventure for its own sake and not a record, perhaps speed of the boat would not have been as primary and the safety issues would have been more paramount.</p>
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If this were really low risk, and she wanted to do a real solo, she shouldn’t have had a phone, or asked to be rescued - we can grant “her and God” as still being solo. </p>
<p>If you wanted to get rescued, then get dad on a boat a couple of miles behind so that he picks up the rescue tab.</p>
<p>I would like to see the sponsors held accountable and made to pay; why should the commercial fishing vessel have to pick up her tab?</p>
<p>^^^There was also the cost of the commercial airliner. Her communications were out and boats were two days away. That created an emergency situation of pretty big proportions, not low risk.</p>
<p>By the way, luckily the fishing captain was rescued from his fall into the water. The reports were that the situation was very tricky. I shudder to think if that man had been injured or lost his life over this. It is not as if his job is “rescue personnel.”</p>
<p>Michaelnkat: thanks for all that great detail on her sailboat.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine falling overboard off some of those ocean going boats. That’s a substancial fall.</p>
<p>In some posts, it is as if, “she lived and survived and so what was the big deal…it was not that risky after all.” The fact is that it came close to much worse and it was at great cost to others. Kind of a big deal the way I see it. Not to mention mental anguish to family (even strangers) for a day.</p>
<p>Our local (Chicago) news just reported that her family is going to do a reality show, and also that the Australian rescue group does want to be reimbursed the ~$300,000.</p>
<p>MichaelNKat: would you by any chance be able to share any impressions of Jessica Watson’s boat, and how it compares with Abby’s?</p>
<p>There is a sailing website, Sailing Anarchy, with many comments about Abby’s lack of preparation and inappropriate boat, along the lines of what MNK posted here. Here is one comment about the comparative merits of Jessica Watson’s boat and Abby’s:</p>
<p>“Jessica Watson sailed around the big blue ball in the nautical equivalent of a brick *<strong><em>house; pretty much indestructible and just about as slow as the second coming. Correct me if you know otherwise but I am not aware of any attempt to circumnavigate in an S & S 34 that hasn’t succeeded. Mind you, spending any time, let alone months alone at sea, on an S & S 34 *</em></strong>ter is my idea of purgatory.
Abby tried to do the trip on a comparatively fragile boat with much less margin for operator error and at the wrong time of year when the likelihood of getting trashed in a southern ocean storm was increased manyfold, despite her protestations to the contrary. Spin it any way you like, Abby is no way Jessica’s equal in terms of emotional maturity and those behind Abbys ill planned journey were lacking in foresight, common sense and experience. Great to see she has been plucked from the unforgiving seas but thank AMSA and the French fishing boat for that, not (insert deity of choice here).”</p>
<p>The Sparkman and Stephens 34 has a long heritage of seaworthiness, durability and competence as a blue water sailboat. The exact specs vary considerably since the boat is typically built to order. Displacement varies depending on the vintage weighing anywhere from 2000-6000 lbs more as a 34 ft boat than the Open 40 sailed by Abby. In general, it can be classified as a “traditional” racer/cruiser. The shape of the hull is rounder and not as beamy carried aft, it has a fuller fin keel configuration instead of a dagger keel, relies on the weight of the keel for ballast and not a water ballast system, the mast is keel stepped and not deck stepped, and the construction and materials are much more substantial. It is one of the most desirable performance cruising boats in the 30 ft range. If I were given the choice of a S&S design (Jessica) or an Open (Abby) for long ocean passages, I would choose the S&S every time.</p>
<p>Thank you very much, NYMomof2 and MichaelNKat!</p>
<p>NYMomof2 and MichaelNKat great information thank you. Could cost have been a factor in Abbys parents selecting a less sea worthy boat? What is the cost of buying and sailing each boat?</p>
<p>I can’t take any credit for the information I posted - I got it from Sailing Anarchy. The information there is consistent with what MNK has been posting from his own knowledge. From what I gather, Abby’s boat was relatively fragile, built for speed, and not suitable for anyone to use for a solo long voyage over the open ocean. </p>
<p>I don’t think the boat was necessarily cheaper than more durable alternatives. I read somewhere that it cost well over $100k by the time the boat was equipped.</p>
<p>The Sailing Anarchy site posted an article that they published in January, at the time that Abby took off. They predicted much of what happened.</p>
<p>For his circumnavigation, my friend chose a Westsail 32, an American design that much resembles the S&S 34 used by Watson. Among other reasons, he chose it because it was the boat type being sailed by the solo sailor who was rescued by helicopter from the middle of the “Perfect Storm” on the Grand Banks in 1991, and then three weeks later the boat showed up off the New Jersey coast, intact and dry. The highest speed he ever got out of it for any long stretch was a little over 7 knots, which is about the same as the S&S 34. When he is under sail power on blue water, he hopes to get ~ 120 nautical miles/day, averaging about 5 knots. He doesn’t achieve that every day, though. Jessica Watson averaged less than 5 knots speed for her trip.</p>
<p>I am not certain how fast Sunderland’s Open 40 is, but their original calculation of the time required for the trip indicated they thought Sunderland could average over 6.5 knots for the whole trip. Of course, she didn’t come close to that before she stopped. The designation of her boat is “Cruiser/racer”, which indicates a meaningfully higher ratio of sail area to displacement compared to shorter, heavier boats like the S&S 34. (Maximum sail area would only be used in very light winds, though.)</p>
<p>This is from the Sailing USA website, on boat design:</p>
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<p>Sunderland, of course, found herself sailing in 30-40’ seas in a very strong gale.</p>
<p>A few more words on risk. Yes, very few circumnavigators die. In large part, though, I think that’s because very few circumnavigators – much less regular navigators – would do anything as stupid as Sunderland was doing. Does anyone wonder why there were no ships within less than three days’ sail of Sunderland’s location? Maybe because no one who wasn’t pulling a reckless stunt would be sailing were she was sailing when she was doing it? (I don’t mean to put all this on Abby Sunderland, by the way. She had a whole “team”, led by her father, that was advising her regularly on things like what course to take.)</p>
<p>That web page also talks about the 1988 Sydney-Hobart race, in which 115 participating boats were hit by an unexpected severe storm. Seven boats were abandoned, and 5 lost, with their crews. An investigatory commission concluded that boat design had little to do with this – once the boats were in the storm, survival was essentially a matter of luck, although crew experience and skill were an important benefit.</p>
<p>If balloon’s boy father went to jail (and he did not even risk a kid’s life), how is that that Abby’s parents are not going to serve? There were public expenses involved in both cases and child endangerement in second case. I do not understand why people are being treated so unfairly.</p>
<p>Balloon boy’s parents were charged with filing false reports and attempting to influence a public servant - a felony charge. </p>
<p>There were no false reports filed in the Sunderland case. </p>
<p>The government may be able to seek restitution without filing charges.</p>