Official Jessica Watson Blog

A big thanks to Mum for holding down the fort (or blog!) while I’ve been out having a particularly crazy week. And another thanks for everyone for all your comments! I think I also owe an apology for being such an inconsistent blogger.

What a busy week… in a very long series of million such weeks. Every day comes with new challenges, dramas, problems to tackle, breakthroughs, success and always a good laugh.
Dragging myself out of bed some mornings is certainly a challenge but to be honest I couldn’t think of anything thing I’d rather be doing, that is apart, from being out there sailing!
But all my efforts are nothing compared to those of the whole team, from everyone working behind the scenes to the totally heroic refit workers who loyally show up every day despite the cold mornings, hard work and my never ending nagging!

To very briefly summarize a week that feels more like a year, we’ve made progress in all directions at the shed.
Dad and I popped down to Sydney for meetings and I spent the weekend away in Brisbane studying Sea Survival with Gerry Fitzgerald.
I found the Survival course really helpful covering just about every possible danger. Drills in the water with a life raft and with flares taught me that like with just about everything, technique rather than brute force is most important.
Time in the class room picking apart the survival and disaster stories, going over check lists and polishing up my knowledge on safety equipment really hammered in a lot of important information to be safely stored in the back of my head.
Coming down with a reaction to the fibreglass resin added a nice itchy flavor to my week, what started out as what I believed was a heat rash soon became a little more serious till I was finally sent off to the doctor when the reaction spread to my face. After being deemed too hard to look at by everyone at the shed and on Mums orders I was sent home, all but banned from working on the boat!

With so much shiny new equipment (from the Brand new Yanmar engine, beautifully polished tiller and Simrad Electronics to the all important dunny!) arriving and being installed every day it feels like the boat is slowly coming back together.
That will have to do for now, there’s plenty more to keep us busy over the next few days and keep your ears open for plenty of exciting news.

Jessica