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Are there really a number of young-couple stories of that nature? People really need to study the conditions involved in sailing across an ocean, or even just around the Pacific islands. You deal with HUGE swells (do some of the people undertaking this have any idea if they can tolerate those kinds of seas without getting seasick?), storms that can be extremely challenging, the doldrums, where there's no wind for days or a couple of weeks, so you're just drifting, and bored out of your skull. You need to know what you're getting yourself into. And you have to have the sailing expertise to be able to handle those storms.
Eh, swells are not such a big thing. You go up, then you come back down. And hope the bow doesn't take on too much blue water. Even if it does, though, if the boat is well designed, it will pop back up again. Even if folks are prone to seasickness, usually after the first few days it will wear off. A friend of mine used to get deathly seasick and he'd still go out. He says after the first two days he doesn't get sea sick anymore until he's been on land again for a few months.
I don't know if the stories about the couples sailing into Hawaii and then divorcing and selling the boat made the papers or anything, but I lived aboard a boat on Oahu for a decade or so and there would be boats come into the harbor from somewhere else and then be put up for sale. The back story as to why they were for sale would frequently be starry-eyed folks who were going to 'sail to Tahiti' and only made it as far as Honolulu. We had quite a few folks living on boats in the harbor who were also going to 'sail to Tahiti' someday. Most of them never left the harbor.
I dunno if that boat is fifty feet or not, it doesn't look that big to me, although they keep calling it a fifty footer. A fifty foot sailboat is a sizable beast and it's not something you'd usually sail around with a crew of only two, especially when one of them is absolutely new. Even a thirty six footer is more than a single hander plus newbie type of boat. If a boat is going to be comfortably single handed then I'd expect it to be no more than thirty two or thirty four feet. Just sayin'.
Apparently, the boat owner has destroyed at least one other sailboat before. She'd gotten grounded going into the Ala Wai harbor on Oahu Island, Hawaii. The Ala Wai is a somewhat narrow channel, although it's short and even with no motor you can sail into it without a lot of effort. I've sailed into it without a motor tons of times. The start and end of the Friday night sailboat races used to be inside the harbor in front of the yacht club. From the flagpole in front of the yacht club to the last coconut tree on the other side was the start and finish line. Usually it'd be a spinnaker start so all the pretty sails would be up for the folks to see while they were having a happy hour drink. It'd be an upwind finish just before sunset so more pretty boats in the sunset for photo ops. (The Ala Wai channel is at the start of Waikiki, so they like photo ops for the tourists.) Anyway, more than three dozen boats would sail (no motors allowed for the racers) out and back into that harbor every Friday and some of them were fifty feet or more. Although most of them were in the twenty five to thirty eight foot range. The previous boat that she wrecked was a smaller boat from the pictures they showed on the evening news here in Hawaii.
So, I dunno. Guess I'll have to rattle the cage of some friends of mine still living on boats over there and see if there's more story than they're putting in the news. I've not bothered to find out.
Okay, further update. She wasn't from the Ala Wai at all, she was moored out in Keehi Lagoon. Ala Wai is all slips and it's pretty much part of Waikiki. Keehi Lagoon is the old seaplane runway and right below the Honolulu International Airport. Two totally different harbors and there's a lot of 'interesting' boats and characters in Keehi Lagoon. Although, back in the 90's the state came in and cleaned most of it up so it's nowhere near as interesting as it used to be.
In any case, apparently, she was moored to a mooring ball out in Keehi Lagoon and not in at one of the slips. A mooring ball is a much less expensive option than a slip. Also, for some unknown reason, she was swimming ashore instead of taking a dinghy. That's kinda strange and a bit dangerous considering how much boat traffic goes between the dinghy dock area and the moorings out in the lagoon. As well as the hammer head sharks in Keehi Lagoon, but they don't usually bother people. Although most people aren't swimming in the lagoon much, either. Stranger and stranger.
That boat didn't look like a 50 footer to me either, but that is what the article said, so I went with it. Looks maybe in the 38 or so foot range to me, but hard to tell.
The white girl looks like the type you see on "COPS" trying to explain some long winded crazy story to a cop that absolutely does not believe a single word...
Yes, that was smart. They also are a couple of tough cookies, according to the mom of one of them.
It really says a lot about getting the right boat, and checking it out in advance, putting it through some challenges, before you set out on a major journey. Or in the case of a boat you've had for years, evaluating all the gear and maybe replacing some of it, before you set out. IDK, maybe they just had bad luck. I'd like to hear their story about why everything went wrong on the boat. Some people, teenagers, even, sail around the world and do phenomenally well, while these two women had some serious problems early on.
At least it was a fifty foot boat and they didn't take a dinghy out in the ocean to try to make it to some island. Because that would make them mentally ill.
Teenagers are monitored when they attempt to sail around the world and they constantly check in. You can't compare the situations.
These two ladies are dumber then f..k.
I blame their parents. They should have brought them on exotic vacations etc when they were children so they wouldn't be this desperate as adults. And they seem almost as mentally ill as people that would attempt a big trip in a dinghy. Their decision was not a smart or mature one.
That boat didn't look like a 50 footer to me either, but that is what the article said, so I went with it. Looks maybe in the 38 or so foot range to me, but hard to tell.
<>So, I dunno. Guess I'll have to rattle the cage of some friends of mine still living on boats over there and see if there's more story than they're putting in the news. I've not bothered to find out.
Do that, we'd like to hear the story. What you've related so far sounds like who we think we've been reading about.
I have sailed a 32 footer from Miami to Nassau with 20 of my best friends and the pictured boat doesn't look any bigger than the Shark V.
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