wrote in message
...
On Fri, 11 Jun 2010 17:48:19 -0400, "mmc" wrote:



I just checked out what boat her brother had sailed on his
circumnavigation
and it was an Islander 36 with a 13,600 lb displacement and Abby's
"Wildeyes" displace 7,407 lbs.
Even though it's 4 feet longer than Zac's, it is literally half the
boat.
I used to work with a guy that said he "planned for success". It took me
a
while to figure out that his planning was based on nothing ever going
wrong.
Poor, poor strategy.


The hull did not fail. People have circumnavigated sucessfully in
properly prepared and equipped Catalina 27's and Cal 33's, both of
which were obviously intended as coastal cruisers.

Not me brother. I've had my ass kicked thoroughly by mother ocean and it
wasn't fun.


The point is, just about any boat can be set up to complete a
circumnavigation, and relatively safely. You can get your ass kicked
out there no matter how big or heavy your boat is. Have you taken a
good look at a mini-transat? Sunderland's boat was NOT the issue that
caused her to fail. If she did everything exactly the same but in a
Valiant 40, the results probably wouldn't have been much different.
Lots of very bad decisions were made.

The boat was not
the weakest link in this adventure, and was not what failed.

She deserves a lot of credit. She had the nads to get out there and give
it
her best. Not many 16 yos have sailed that far by themselves (I'm half a
friggin century and haven't!) and it's not like she just quit.
Guess we'll find out what happened when she gets home.


That's like saying someone deserves a lot of credit for having nads
because they walked across an 8 lane highway at night while
blindfolded.






Right you are. These liberal minded folks who think other people deserve a
lot of credit for trying and FAILING have no idea of what it means to
succeed at a task. The equate FAILURE with success and actually give kudos
for failure (trying and failing). What's next? are they going to be giving
kudos for people who don't even try and then fail? Probably.

The way I see it, the poor girl never had a chance. Her so-called team did
her a great disservice. The first indication was when she had to put into La
Paz in order to ship greater electrical generating systems. Duh! Didn't
anybody on her so-called team have half a brain and could sit down and
figure amps required vs. amps available?

Then there was the autopilot debacle. Double Duh! What morons allow a
circumnavigation to be compromised because they rely TOTALLY on two electric
autopilots? What were they thinking?

Then they routed the poor girl into the roaring forties in the wintertime.
One has to wonder if maybe mom and dad had a multi-million dollar life
insurance policy on the girl and needed some income desperately. Excuse me,
but wasn't this a circumnavigation? Why the need for speed in dangerous
latitudes? Somebody is very confused.

If this is what sailing has been reduced to in this day and age and people
think the sailor deserves kudos then there is little or no hope for
seamanship anymore.


Wilbur Hubbard