Thursday, April 15, 2010 at 3:41AM Jessica Watson's Mainsail Rips Sailor Worn but Optimistic
It's been 20,000 nautical miles and 179 days at sea, but Mother Nature saved the toughest for last as solo around-the-world sailor Jessica Watson's yacht had its mainsail ripped apart in bad weather in the Southern Ocean off Australia.
The ABC reports the 16-year-old "battled six-metre swells, cold stinging rain and 50-knot wind gusts" about 250 nautical miles off Albany in Western Australia.
The wind gusts reportedly created two large tears in her boat's mainsail. In her blog, Watson describes the electrical storms as "the worst I've seen at sea yet".
As usual, Jessica has a positive attitude and reports that all is well, as she has a spare mainsail and the prediction is for better weather over the next week as she heads east to Tasmania.
Watson and her yacht Ella's Pink Lady are due to arrive back in Sydney around May 2, after sailing out of Sydney Heads on October 18 last year.
- From: news.com.au
- April 15, 2010
Ella's Pink Lady was already well reefed down at the time. But till I was able to furl almost all of the headsail away and pull the tiny third reef in, we were healed over pretty dramatically. But the wind soon dropped again and as it did, the rain really started. It was so heavy that you could hardly see where the water stopped and the sky began. A bit of thunder has never worried me, but alone at sea at 4 in the morning, it seems particularly menacing and it becomes a lot harder to keep your nerves in check!
Australia, Jessica Watson, Mainsail, Pink Lady, Rips, Southern Ocean, solo, storms | in Australia, Sailing, Women, World Records 
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