On Sat, 12 Jun 2010 20:47:06 -0400, "J. Clarke"
wrote:

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.

Isn't the aircraft takeoff weight the responsibility of the pilot? Seems only
an inexperienced (incompetent) pilot would risk others' lives on an overloaded
plane.

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.

See above.

I could repeat the above line, but chose to snip instead