Youngest Solo Sailor to Circumnavigate

Jessica Watson is a diminutive teenager with big ambitions. While most 16 year old girls are planning what to wear to weekend parties, Jessica is pounding the corporate pavement to her dreams. Audacious dreams that include sailing 22,000 nautical miles circumnavigating the globe. Alone. Unassisted. Around the World. Non-stop.

I caught up with 15 year old Jessica recently at Mooloolaba Marina where she lives onboard on her family's motor cruiser 'Home Aboard' and was fascinated by her determination. She aims to become the youngest non-stop, solo, unassisted sailor to circumnavigate the globe. Growing up in an adventurous free-spirited family, where home alternates between sea and land (when onshore Jessica's family live in a fully kitted out motor home), fuelled Jessicas desire for adventure. Devouring books about Joshua Slocum, Kay Cottee and Jesse Martin amongst other solo sailing legends from a young age, Jessica has been planning this record-breaking voyage since she was eight years old. She began sailing dinghies around the same time, and has since built up an impressive resume of Pacific Ocean voyages over the subsequent years.

Jesse Martin was 18 years old when he returned to Melbourne to claim the current record, in 1999. Jessica aims to depart after her 16th birthday in Nov 2009, giving her plenty of time to return home safely to Mooloolaba and make history. While Martin took 327 days and Cottee took 189 days, Jessica is expecting to back within 210 days (7 months).

Finding the right vessel is critical to the success of the voyage.Other solo circumnavigators like Martin, David Dicks and the legendary Jon Sanders all used an S&S34. Once a suitable yacht is secured, Jessica and her supporters will equip the yacht for the rigours of a long ocean passage, carrying out a major refit followed by extensive sea trials. In the meantime Jessica is racking up the offshore sea miles. She’s also studying her RYA Yachtmaster certificate, as well as completing her regular high school studies through distance learning, all the while learning everything she can about maintaining the systems onboard a yacht.

Signing up sponsors to support her record-breaking attempt, Jessica considers the logistics of preparing such an ambitious campaign to be far more daunting than the actual voyage itself. A quietly determined young woman, she has such a strong vision of achieving her ambition, it’s hard to believe she won’t sail herself into the record books in 2009.

Read Jessicas blog here and visit her website here