Would You Let Your 16 Year Old Sail Across The World Alone?

[redhen]

Quote:

True..And he did it. *...going to check how old he was..*

But he went from bouncing around Europe, to heading off, into the great unknown, without a clue..... He could have fallen off the edge of the Earth, you know?

 

[PurpleChicken]

Quote:
Yeah, like running countries and conquering empires.


I would absolutely let my child do it, even younger, if they had the tenacity and obviously the skills to do it. I'd worry sick but I'd be just over the horizon watching her or him on radar.

 

[kstaven]

I have to say I would let her do it if she was my daughter. I had a great deal of freedom at that age and if a kid can be mature enough and responsible enough I couldn't deny what was afforded to me at that age.

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

With the technology available today she could be doing 24/7 video chat with her family the whole time.

Satellite phones, GPS, wireless internet etc. Sure would be much "easier" for a 16 year old to do that today than 20 years ago.

 

[Eggs4Sale]

I've got an 11-year-old I'm thinking of shipping off.

 

[Mahonri]

I'd send my 15 year old. Might make him appreciate things a bit more. )

(Love you son)

 

[Eggs4Sale]

After watching Cast Away and those Discovery Channel shows, how can anyone get near water?

 

[Mahonri]

I have a friend that was in Samoa for the tsunami....

wouldn't that be a blast?

 

[wombat]

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Satellite phones still cost about $1 to $2 per minute. 24/7 would run you about a million dollars for the trip, give or take a couple hundred k.

If you're doing a true "for the record" circumnavigation, you don't use the Panama Canal; you round Cape Horn. There's a lot of very empty ocean at those latitudes crossing the pacific. It's the most dangerous part of the journey, and many commercial satellite services won't cover it. You've got radio communications, and even that can be iffy.

There's no "wireless internet" without some underlying communications; satellite or radio, where those reach. You'd need Iridium for full ocean coverage, and it's pricey.

GPS does make things safer and easier, and hull, mast, and rigging technologies do too, but you'd still be on your own out there for a long time, and help can be a long time in coming.

 

[TheOLDNewChick]

I'm not a parent, so I can't answer on whether or not I'd let my child go. I don't know how mature my children will be at sixteen years old. Speaking from the point of a 16 year old (in a month, anyway), she's very brave to be doing this alone. Of course, I've always been mature for my age, and there are a lot of "kids" like me out there who have more book knowledge AND common sense than most 30+ year olds. If it's something she's passionate about and has the skills to safely do so, go for it. I applaud her parents for letting her go.
Adults think kids grow up too fast these days and if you think about it, they're wrong. If I lived just a couple hundred years ago, I would probably be freshly married, or possibly have a child by now. The reason kids & teens stay so immature for so long is because they aren't thrown into life like they used to be. They grow up with parents petting them and babying them far after those years should be over. Without freedom, we can't make mistakes. And mistakes are how we learn, right?

So I applaud the parents & the parents on here who trust their childrens intelligence and let them pursue their dreams at such a young age. If all parents had that state of mind and treated their child like that, there wouldn't be as many problems with self-confidence and kids being scared to learn how to rely on themselves.