On 6/12/2010 1:14 PM, wrote:
On Jun 12, 9:32 am, wrote:


Lucky for her and her parents.

Lucky, indeed. I have to confess I did breathe a sigh of relief when
they found that kid.

In the end though, she did get what she wanted. Attention, attention,
attention.

Her parents will get the same. Now there will be a "heroic" twist to
the story, which will no doubt be much more bankable than if she made
it. I can already see Oprah asking the parents "what they were
thinking" and listening to them reason out they weren't the type of
parents to be dreams stealers.

I can imagine the talk show hosts asking her if she was ever scared,
while displaying her book on the desk.

They better get cracking, though. There is another young girl ( is
there ANYTHING fully empowered children can't do these days? ) that
wanted to do the same trip at 13. The Dutch courts where she lives
blocked her try. (Dream stealing *******s... she even told them it
was her lifelong dream... )

She has since run away from home with her boat to try, but without the
millions of dollars of gear and logistic provided to Abby, didn't get
too far.

She has proudly announced that it is a matter of time, and once she
gets it back together, she will board "The Guppy" and make another
attempt. No one will steal the dreams of that now 14 year old girl.

The courts handed the Dutch government their asses on that one--they're
not going to be able to block her again.

Sadly for Abby, if she makes it the Dutch girl will eclipse ALL the
attention Abby will enjoy. After Abby blowing her horn about staring
down her fears, waiting heroically to be rescued, and mastering her
emotions while waiting for rescue, in the end she has just wrecked a
very expensive boat.

Not really. Dekker is not going for a nonstop, unaccompanied
circumnavigation--she's going port-to-port in company with another boat.

Dekker may end up the youngest solo circumnavigator, but Jessica Watson
remains the youngest nonstop solo circumnavigator.

And the boat isn't particularly "wrecked" or particularly expensive.
Needs a mast and some rigging and probably some sails. One sail (not
one trip, one fabric assembly used for propulsion) on a competitive
maxi-boat costs more than her entire attempt.

Almost making achieving that goal is the same as almost winning the
Super Bowl, almost winning the World Series, almost winning the
Stanley Cup. Soon, no one will remember her name.

Although.... there is an alternative to the attention they crave.
Surely I can't be the only one to remember the parent/child combo that
tried to fly across the USA in a plane. It was always that child's
dream to fly across the USA, for all of her seven years on this
planet.

To earn her dream title, the 7 year old had to take off and land the
plane. She was an inspiration to small children everywhere, classes
followed her on television, she was covered by the morning shows that
charted her progress. Girl Power was a wonderful thing to see, no
doubt. Little girls everywhere were inspired to do all kinds of
wonderful things.

Then she crashed the plane and killed both her Dad, herself, and a
flight instructor.

That's a nice fiction, but in fact what killed them was an overloaded
plane at a high density altititude in bad weather. There's not even any
real reason to believe that the kid was flying the plane--she had a
flight instructor sitting next to her with a full set of controls.
Chuck Yeager may not have been able to pull that one out.

BUT - now they indeed have a valid, permanent
place in the record books.

They even created the impetus in Congress to pass a law that will keep
others from challenging their record, as it makes it illegal in the
USA to have children that young fly.

Not quite. It's illegal for anyone not holding a private license or
better and a valid medical to manipulate the controls in "any record
attempt, aeronautical competition, or aeronautical feat".

How many people can inspire
actual binding laws? So their efforts will always be a part of
history.

Mission accomplished.

Ted Koppel had this to say: (from Time magazine)

To its credit, ABC confronted the issue of whether television was complicit in the tragedy. On Nightline, Ted Koppel spoke for the network when he said, "We need to begin by acknowledging our own contribution...We feed one another: those of you looking for publicity and those of us looking for stories." Then he posed the question of "whether we in the media...by our ravenous attention contribute to this phenomenon," and answered it himself: "We did."

Read mo http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...#ixzz0qfBGuHgW

Fear not. In this empowering, vapid, society of attention seekers,
there will be others to pick up the slack Abby left on her trip.
Since there is no glory in simply sailing around the world (defeating
the well hashed quote "I sail for the love of sailing") I doubt she
will try again if no TV cameras are present. I don't know how
interested she would be in doing that for nothing other than the
enjoyment, even if was her lifelong dream.



Can't wait until we have our very own 10, 12, or 13 year old from the
USA trying that again. After all, if they can climb mountains,
wouldn't it be a double standard to prevent someone that young from
trying another sailing record?

And if she pulls it off, then what?

This business of treating kids as something other than miniature adults
is recent.