On 6/12/2010 6:17 PM, wrote:
On Jun 12, 1:20 pm, "J. wrote:

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.

Using the same boating comparison logic instead of an actual dollar,
it was not as expensive as an aircraft carrier (a very expensive
boat), or and nuclear submarine, or even just the super sized personal
yachts such as the Dubai.

The used Open 40's (not to be confused with the Class 40's) of that
vintage seem to be in the area of $425,000 to $450,000. The Anasazi
Girl seems to be almost as fully equipped as Abby's but seem to be
missing the pricey (OK, to me) auto pilot features, etc. There are
two Open 40's for sale he

http://www.owenclarkedesign.com/Open40AnasaziGirl

And another questions comes to mind; of the boat is not wrecked, why
would they even consider sinking it?

Link to the LA Times article:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/39olxkn

Apparently the boat (even at it's value of +/- $425,000 may not be
worth saving, and might be left for salvage. If it isn't worth towing
back, (think of this as your car), wouldn't you call it a wreck?
Semantics may vary, but to me, if it suffered physical damage to the
point of it being unable to perform it's intended task, whether it is
a car, boat, or train, I would say it was wrecked.

You will probably say severely damaged.

Although I could not find the exact article, I read that the cost of
her refitted and fully updated electronics package was about
$600,000. This was in a interview that was done before she took off.

So say it was only worth $500,000. I guess in today's brave new world
of "billions" for everything imaginable, a casual 1/2 million tossed
away isn't much.

Still, no matter how I try to be an expansive thinker, a half million
dollar toy is expensive to me.

I found the ad a while back in which the owner of the boat at the time
was asking something like 120K. Can't find it now though.

YMMV.

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,

Really? What part is fiction?

That she killed anybody.

Don't you remember the news coverage
she got?

I remember a lot of news coverage. However if you find the NTSB report
they concluded that the cause of the crash was not an inexperience pilot
but an overloaded aircraft at a high density altitude. Of course the
newspapers know far more about the causes of plane crashes than the
professional accident investigators, so we should always believe the
newspapers.

School kids charted her progress, teachers made maps, etc.,
to show how she was doing. There are still articles on the 'net that
talk about her classmates following along.

Which has no relevance at all to the truth of the notion that her
piloting skills or lack of same were the cause of the crash.

She constantly wore her pink "Girls Fly" cap while going on her trip.

If I wear a hat that says "Barack Obama" does that make me President?

In fact, the day they crashed, they had just left a large group of
reporters that were eagerly relaying every scrap of information they
could get. Every minute of her flight was covered for all to see.

It was? So how many reporters died in the crash and where is the
footage showing her at the controls as it progressed? Sorry, they
didn't "cover every minute of her flight". The covered her arrivals and
departures but really had no idea what was going on in the cockpit at
any given moment.

And of course they did crash.

So did this 2000 hour pilot, for the same reasons:

http://www.aopa.org/asf/epilot_acc/lax07fa258.html

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.

You aren't saying the Dubroffs would pull a fast one are you? Surely
Jessica was flying...

Doesn't matter who was flying. Damned few pilots are good enough to
pull a save under those circumstances.

In fact, there are a great deal of statements from fellow fliers and
colleagues of Reid that think he was not flying. It may be loyalty to
him, but they say that he was simply too good and too experienced as a
pilot to crash under challenging, but not impossible conditions.

What makes you think that the conditions were not impossible? If you
look at the above video you'll see a pilot with more experience than
Reid lose it under the same conditions.

The litany of mistakes made by the CPIC was long enough I hope the
child was flying and not Reid.

There were, according to the NTSB, three mistakes. 100 pounds
overloaded, high density altitude, and bad weather.

Bottom line; we'll never know.

But you'd rather believe the newspapers and the opinions of people who
were not there and did not investigate the crash over the findings of
the crash investigators.


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?

I am thinking of a mother nursing a newborn going on the next moon
shot so her child can claim it was the youngest to go to the moon.

In 1920 you would have said the same thing about a mother nursing a
newborn flying across the Atlantic. Now it's an everyday occurrance.

Only to be topped by a fetus in suspended animation to go to Mars and
back.

Sure, who wants to be stuck with a squalling baby on a spaceship for two
years?

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

For me, I would add that the business of exploiting your kids for your
own gratification is nothing new.

Yeah, right, every time a kid decides to do something it's because the
kid was being exploited by somebody. Never occurs to you that the kid
may be doing something that was his or her own idea.