Jessica Watson

Opening Sentence: ‘…A half-moon had risen, giving the sea a silvery sheen above the darkness below …’

I am a huge fan of this gutsy young Australian girl and watched her journey from go to whoa. I was one of many who logged into her blog daily to see if she had written another post, and read the comments left by other blog watchers. This ever growing community shared her journey nautical mile by nautical mile.

On 15th May 2010 this 16 year old girl completed her personal challenge of sailing non-stop, single handed around the world. It had taken her 210 days and along the way she waspounded by gale force winds, downed seven times by huge waves, suffered sleep deprivation and battled loneliness. Thousands and thousands of people lined Sydney harbour, and an even bigger TV viewing audience (myself included) watched, to cheer her on as she sailed pass the finished line.

Jessica Watson writes well, she writes from the heart and tells you like it is. Her book is just an expansion of her blog; using excerpt from he blog, Jessica takes you behind the scenes, fills us in on the things that were going on in the background, things that she didn’t want to worry her parents about, or her blog followers. Like how she noticed that ‘Ella Pink Lady’ was still leaking after she had set sail and she worried that she would have to fix it herself or turn back. The problem rectified itself. In fact ‘Ella Pink Lady’ was as much of the focus as Jessica herself. All through her journey, and her book, Jessica write ‘we.’ We had calm weather, we had a visitor today. Jessica’s little yacht was the other half of this adventure, and has not been left out of the story.

As she embarked on her voyage, there was much public debate as to whether Watson was too young to be tackling the trip on her own, and what were her parents think they were doing letting her go. Jessica fills in the background of how she got the compulsion to sail around the world, and what she had to do to launch off in October 2009 and sail off into adventure.

Jessica is a slip of a thing. She looks like a breath of wind would blow her away – but she has the inner strength that is typical of the seafaring heroes she admired. Fighting mountainous seas in gale force winds not only did she not blow away she arrived safely in calm waters slightly battered but never beaten. We say she is a hero she says she is “just an ordinary girl who had a dream and worked hard at it and proved that anything is possible” .… (mehr)