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Fw: Just shy of her 17th birthday


In about three weeks, weather permitting, a teenager just shy of her 17th birthday will sail her trusty little 34-footer back through Sydney Heads, having survived hurricane-force winds, monstrous seas, lightning storms, freezing conditions, sail damage and five terrifying knockdowns.
But Jessica, cocooned in her little boat and shielded from the extent her journey has captured the imagination of millions, is adamant that she is just a normal person who decided to do something different.
"l'm not anyone special," she said before she set sail in October.
"I was always the girl who had no confidence but you just stand up and try."
Mrs Watson believes her daughter is "an ordinary person doing an extraordinary thing". And, while Jessica suffers from a reading disability, by the time she sailed out of Sydney last October her mum had made sure there were no gaps in her education when it came to sailing round the world.
At an age when her friends were engrossed in computer games, Jessica - who grew up without a television - had her head in an engine, watching it being stripped down and then putting it back together. She learned to hand sew sails, she did the same Safety and Sea course as Sydney to Hobart sailors, clamouring into and out of life rafts, swimming in full wet-weather gear and letting off flares.
She wrote emails to find backers, she asked experienced hands to share their knowledge, watched every machine she could find being stripped so she knew how they worked and could repair them.
She pestered tradesman to show them their craft, took a diesel mechanics course and washed dishes to pay for airline tickets so she could gain more offshore sailing experience delivering yachts to Australia and New Zealand.
"She wanted to do a Sydney to Hobart but she was too young," Mrs Watson said. Instead she flew to New Zealand to sail down to the Antarctic.
"She did a radio operators course, safety at sea, Maritime First Aid, a marine diesel course," her mum said.
"She saved up and flew places so she could sail and get experience.
"When she sailed to the south Antarctic islands she was working.
"She was helping with meals, navigating, doing watches and she was talking to everyone, hearing their stories, learning from them. Educating herself."
Onshore, Jessica was compiling endless lists of things to do, people to contact, things to learn.
She wrote projected journey timelines and met them, found backer Ella Bache and solo sailor Don McIntyre, who donated the little pink boat that would transport her round the world.
She was hands-on refitting the boat for the journey, working for hours on the refit with boatbuilder and solo sailor Bruce Arms, who donated his time to her cause and took her sailing.
"We saw her cross the T's and dot the I's on everything," Mrs Watson said.
"'I thought: 'Good on you'. She was never distracted from her goal."
It was an extraordinary goal for a teenager who had disliked sailing when she first tried it at eight.
But it was a goal that has captured the imagination of people around the world, fascinated by her courage, determination and spirit and desperate to see her arrive in Sydney around May 9 safe and with her dream realised.
"She's isn't your average 16-year-old girl preoccupied with what 16-year-old girls are preoccupied with. She has a mental toughness about her," John Hallas said of his company Ella Bache's decision to be one of Jessica's earliest financial bakers.
"She is brave, she chases her dreams and she has a conviction and drive to be the best she can be.
"When people ask me why I got involved I say it is part of the Aussie spirit to have a go . Just have a go.
"It's the Anzac spirit and Jessica is an extraordinary person and extraordinary people have to be supported."
Jean
**Please Note: This post in no way suggests the author has any idea what she is talking about.
Take everything said with a grain of salt (followed by a shot of tequila), and it wont bother you as much.
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