TV: The Schoolboy Who Sailed the World

Originally posted by timeintheboat I wonder what if anything he'll do next in sailing?

I'd not be surprised if it was a different adventure sport he did something in next.

Do it non-stop this time?

Accepting that the editing was there to tell the story the broadcasters wanted to tell (experts wrong, against all the odds etc.) there were some odd family dynamics going on there - at times the word creepy came into my head.

In sailing around the world sailing is only a bit of it - keeping the boat and yourself together is the bigger part of it. That takes guts and the kid had the right stuff.

I'd love to do something like that one day (some how it wasn' me that won the £45M) but if I don't get 7+ hours kip a night I turn into a psychopath after a few days.

I wonder what if anything he'll do next in sailing?

Oh, I don't know, there are no amount of nerves which would make me (and I suspect most people reading this) not know where the wind was coming from on a nice sunny day in the english channel. It would be second nature. What I found amazing was that it's clearly possible to circumnavigate the world, cross the atlantic or whatever you fancy whilst being so poor at sailing that you can't tell where the wind is coming from and don't know that it's easier to shake out a reef if head to wind. Maybe tenacity, determination, guts, courage and all those other qualities are more important in these kind of ventures than sailing talent.

I'm quite sure I couldn't match the lad for determination and courage but I'm totally certain I'm a better sailor than him. I guess it's similar to people being able to climb Everest whilst barely knowing one end of a crampon from another. 40 years ago you would have had to have been among the world's elite mountaineers to achieve it but lots of people do it these days with just the most rudimentary training. Good kit and technology is what makes it possible.

I just got the sense of the father being terribly pushy and like Rick said, living out his dreams though his son. He did it though, so fair play to him for doing it. I can't help wondering what the general opinion of the father would be if he had fallen overboard and died in the Southern Ocean through lack of experience dealing with a situation though. It WILL happen one of these days to one of these inexperienced kids and their parents will be in a whole heap of trouble.

To be fair you could see the lad was terrified and nerves can do funny things to you. In my opinion it was no different to someone who has a car crash or near miss and then 'forgets' how to drive for a few seconds afterwards. The enormity of what lay before him was probably just sinking in and he was unable to concentrate on the task in hand, perfectly natural.