In the 2010 memoir True Spirit, Jessica Watson, the author-narrator-protagonist, introduces herself as a child who was “pretty much afraid of everything.” In particular, however, she was like many children in having a deathly fear of swimming. From this point on, the narrative becomes a portrait of a young woman committed to living Helen Keller’s inspirational advice that “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
Jessica is the child of New Zealanders Julie and Roger who subsequently leap across the narrow but dangerous watery divide separating the two countries in 1987 when they moved to Australia. While still a very young child, Jessica was joining her siblings and parents in becoming devotees of the sailing life from a home base at the Southport Yacht Club in Hollywell. Just as she was about to enter fifth grade, the whole family moved onto a 52-foot boat called the Home Abroad which, indeed, became their home for more than five years. Jessica basically experienced the transition from girl to teenager mostly without ever setting foot on solid terrain. Meanwhile, the nighttime ritual of bedtime reading by her mother to the kids eventually brought the story of Jesse Martin into her life, significantly altering its course forever.
Martin’s memoir, Lionheart, is the story of his successful 1999 attempt to become the youngest person to ever circumnavigate the globe on a non-stop solo journey in a boat. That Jesse was young instead of an old bearded explorer like history books and that he wasn’t being bankrolled by a rich family in which privilege had fueled his ambition spoke to her own situation living aboard that yacht and coming to know the intricacies of sailing through hands-on daily experience. It does not take for the heat of inspiration at the accomplishment of another to explode into mania and long after her mother first opened Martin’s story one night to begin reading, Jessica is obsessively researching the long history of the stories of attempted solo circumnavigation.
This leads to serious investigation of the availability of grants and other means of funding which is definitely not a cheap endeavor. Of essential assistance in this early stage—as well as throughout—is Bruce Arms, a noted New Zealand yachtsman with several racing trophies sitting on his mantel. To gain the experience necessary before going solo, she land a job as a crewmember aboard a 42-foot yacht called Elegant Gypsy. The passage proves remarkably problem-free which is great for a passenger, but not particularly useful for a teenager dreaming of making it around the globe all by herself. After landing several more jobs working as a crewmember on assorted other yachts, she finally gets her own 33-foot version of the exact same Sparkman & Stephens mode S&S 34 used by Jesse Martin in his solo trip. Bruce Arms is joined by other experienced sailors to help with refitting it specifically for Jessica’s purposes. She rechristens it Pink Lady after that name was declared the winner of a highly publicized “Name Jessica’s Boat” contest. Response to the actual pink color scheme on the exterior of the boat is decidedly mixed, however. Later, the boat will be renamed to Ella’s Pink Lady after skin care company Ella Baché becomes a major sponsor.
Just before launch, Jessica learns that she cannot hope to official break Jesse Martin’s record as the youngest person to sail around the world because the World Sailing Speed Record Council had discontinued the practice of keeping official records. The same source does still maintain certain requirements for recognizing the feat, however, and Jessica learns she must arrive at the same port from which she departed, cross all lines of longitude, crosses the equator into the northern hemisphere at least once, and navigate a course that runs to the south of both South America and Africa. The last requirement ensures that she will be sailing through some of the most dangerous waters on the planet.
During a test run in September 2009, as Jessica prepares to bunk down for the night, her small boat collides with the massive ship Silver Yang, leaving Ella’s Pink Lady dismasted but still able to return to port under its own power. The reaction to the collision once again produces what is a recurring element throughout the story: complaints about her age, gender, and general capacity to possibly do what she is planning to do. Her parents also receive criticism for encouraging the solo trip. After repairs to the damage caused by the collision are finally completed, the pink-hulled boat launches out of Sydney Harbor in October 2009.
From that point, the trip becomes a combination of meeting all the markers required to officially meet the requirements for a solo circumnavigation and the personal issues of being all alone in a tiny boat in the middle of very large oceans. October 26, 2009, illuminates the personal issues when she wakes up to find an assortment of squid up to ten inches long plastered to her deck. November 19, 2009, is the day that she crosses the equator into the northern hemisphere as required. The weeks in between are filled with reading books, bouncing back and forth between extremes of energy and the depressive effects of isolation, and watching videos of the TV show Bones which transforms into strange dreams, and episodes of Top Gear which intensifies the boredom. November 24, 2009, brings her back home south of the equator. Sleep deprivation and the inability to regularly catch fish become recurring nagging problems, but nothing insurmountable.
Jessica crosses the international date line on Christmas and thus experiences the odd phenomenon of actually going back in time so that she is celebrating Christmas Day back home while she is experiencing Christmas Eve in the location she’s actually occupying. A month later, Ella’s Pink Lady undergoes its most dramatic conflict with the natural conflict of sailing around the world to date when winds up to 65 knots toss the little pink boat around like a toy. Both boat and skipper suffer damage, but they still push onward to the halfway point of the voyage just 100 days after setting out from Sydney.
On February 16, 2010, another milestone marker is successfully achieved when Jessica crosses the Prime Meridian which officially takes her from the western hemisphere into the eastern hemisphere. She notes in her long that it has been four months since the journey started, but time has seemed to pass on fast-forward. Despite the long lonely nights and the long lonely days, she has managed to avoid literally developing cabin fever and remains in high spirits even as the danger of navigating around the Cape of Good Hope is just days away. Light winds slow down the passage, but it is, fortunately, free of conflict, marked by an orange moon and sky flooded with the flickering pinpricks of countless stars.
The final 4200 miles of the journey home are marked by occasional bouts of severe weather that actually sends her mast into the water, but without suffering any major damage. Easter is celebrated with chocolate but without eggs. This is the first in a journey that loneliness and isolation finally get the better of her as she notes that she set a voyage record by maintaining a grouchy mood for several days. A little more than a month later, on May 15, 2010—210 days after she left—Jessica sails back into Sydney Harbor just three days before her seventeenth birthday.
