A 17-year-old boy has become the youngest person to sail solo around the world after entering UK waters. Mike Perham, from Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, has tackled 50ft waves, gale force winds and technical problems during a 30,000-mile circumnavigation.
A biologist from Rutland has become the first woman to row solo across the Indian Ocean. Sarah Outen, 24, set off from the west coast of Australia in April and arrived at the island of Mauritius on Monday evening. Crowds lined up to welcome her as a local boat guided her to the island after 124 days at sea.
He might well have been Michael, but he would not have been on his own; he would have been part of a large crew surrounded by experienced sailors looking out for his safety.
Solo around the world was really something when Francis Chicester did it.
No GPS; no SatComm; no radar; no AIS collision warning systems; no wxfax; not even a pocket calculator to help with the data reduction from his sextant readings.
He did it all the old-fashioned way. Compass and sextant and chronometer for position, if he was lucky to have clear skies, otherwise it was pure DR, hand-plotted on a Mercator lattice chart. Sight reduction was by paper trig and log tables, hand-calculated and hand-plotted. He was his own weather forecaster too, using little more than a barometer, thermometer, and the practiced eye reading the sky and the sea from decades of experience as an airman and seaman.
Yes, it was quite common to have a cabin boy, often children being trained at an early age to be Navy officers. Watch the movie "Master and Commander". A cousin went to sea at age 15 in the mid 1800s. Rose in the ranks as time went by. See the wiki on midshipmen: Midshipman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Absolutely not taking anything away from the lad, but his circumnav' may not be recognised universally as many official sailing bodies require at least one pair of antipodal points to be crossed.
Well I think the lad is a credit to his parents and an inspiration to yong men.
However it has got pretty serious in Holland. The young girl of 13 who wants to do a similar thing has been taken off her parents by the Courts, after Social Services have intervened. Now whilst I understand that she is too young for such an event/challenge, surely just saying 'no' would have done. Taking her away from her parents!!!!!
Edited to add
They are now clarifying on the news that she is not going to be taken away from her parents and may live with her father, but she is now under the protection of the courts, who have decided that they must have more proof that the girl is mentally mature enough for such an undertaking.!!! Social services wanted her taken away from her parents, the judge has said no, but she ia a ward of court now.
Last edited by Roger Sofarover; 28th Aug 2009 at 09:22.
Ordinarily, I'd be the first to take a riot baton to ever increasing State intrusion into family life, but if the parents are obsessed with allowing her to continue, this seems sensible.
Yes may be happening in Holland, but where did this all kick off......
It emerged during the legal proceedings that the teenage girl had been placed in foster care by British police after she sailed single-handed from Holland to Britain in May.
Police in Lowestoft and social workers decided that the return journey was too dangerous and placed Miss Dekker in a home until her father came to collect her.
So OK to hand out condoms & pills for underaged sex but this form of adventure is not allowed by the nanny state?
Social workers argued that Miss Dekker was too young to be aware of the dangers of a solo journey and psychologists suggested that two years of isolation on the high seas would damage the young girl's development.
