SHE SAILED ALONE

 Tania Aebi sailed round the world alone at nineteen. That was a punishment given by her father. She was the youngest person ever to do it, but she missed the record. How did she miss it? Read on and find out.

                Nineteen-year old Tania Aebi was a failure at school. Her father did not know what to do with her. He thought it would be a waste of time and money to send her to college. So he spoke to her.

                “Look, Tania, instead of sending you to college, I will buy you a sailing boat to sail solo round the world. How would you like that?” In fact, he did not really want her to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. It was a punishment. Anyway, he was not sending her to college. She explains, “He had lost hopes for me. He even thought I was a useless person.”

                Tania sailed out of New York harbor in a boat named Varuna ( named after the Indian God of the sea). She sailed south and through the Panama Canal (between North and South America) into the pacific ocean. By and by she learnt to guide her boat by the stars in the night sky. When she came to the island of American Samoa she was kind to a hitch-hiker. She gave him a lift to another island.

                Sailing all alone was not easy. Once while she was ailing across the Mediterranean Sea she had trouble; her boat overturned in a storm. Another time it hit against a ship. But she continued to sail. Months later, she sailed safely back to America.

                Tania aebi was the youngest person ever to sail alone round the world. So she would have set a new record in sailing. She was also the first American woman to do so. That was antoehr record. Unfortunately she did not get recognition for these achievements. Remember how she gave a lift to a hitch-hiker at American Samoa? There were two people in the boat when she did that. For this reason, she missed both records. That act of kindness was a mistake – or was it?

                For a year now ( in 1988), Tania has been at work on a book about her experiences. She is yet to finish writing it. She says writing is harder than sailing round the world alone. She is right too – she took only a few months to sail round the world.

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GATHERED FROM MY OLD TEXT BOOK