I'd much rather spend winter in the central Pacific sub-tropics/tropics. She departed SOCAL in January (winter) and arrived at her final destination (far southern Indian Ocean) in May-June (late fall going into winter). Then again she was delayed en-route and may have planned to cross that piece of water earlier than she did. Maybe she was supposed to have spent winter in the Pacific sub-tropics/tropics.

Her boat was purposely designed and built for sailing the Southern Ocean and that seems to have been the plan; still with the delays I'd have considered shifting north. She may have been going for speed and she can cross more lines of longitude further south, but that's a very unforgiving piece of water.

Originally Posted By: James_Van_Artsdalen
. . .The one poor decision I see appears to be a case of "go fever", not exactly unknown in adults (hello Apollo 1). I suspect the reason she was crossing that area in a bad weather season was that if she waited until after the season she might not have broken the record (which, ironically, she had already abandoned by the time she got there). There's lots of blame all around if this is the case, but at least she didn't set sail before she & the boat were ready.. . .
Agree.

That said, I think she did good, right up until that big wave rolled her and broke Wild Eye's mast. At that point age was irrelevant.
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Better is the Enemy of Good Enough.
Okay, what’s your point??