Quote Originally Posted by papaver View Post
My little niece works for a center that gives shelter to young girls that are victims of sex/people traffickers. Believe me, a 13 year old blond virgin, is excellent merchandise.
Isn't one of the primary motives of the pirates to kidnap for ransom? I'm assuming they would think they could fetch quite a sum for a 13 year old girl.

This sort of reminds me of 10-15 years back where there was a 7 or 8 year old girl that was trying to be the first 7-8 year old to fly across the US (with her father & coach in the plane). But anyways, there was a crash and they all died...

And her mother was tearfully proclaiming that the girl had died doing what she loved to do and what she wanted to do... Really, a 7-8 year old had independently made it her life's goal to become the first 7-8 year old to fly across the US?

I think most kids can dream about sailing around the world, and don't need to dream about being the youngest one ever to do it. I think adults plant those types of ideas.

but anyways, if it were my daughter - if she was annoying and all teenager like, hell yeah, I'd let her sail around the world. Maybe she'd be over her angst before she got back. But if she had angst, she probably wouldn't want to sail around the world.

There's a lot of people that don't let their 13 year olds stay home alone - we definitely don't let our 13 years olds live alone for 2 years... and if parents did leave their 13 year olds to live alone, they'd probably be thrown in jail and have their children taken away from them... So, I really don't think she should be allowed to do it now... And I really don't see how it would be anti-climatic to make her wait till she was 16-18 to let her sail around the world solo... I mean, she's still getting the opportunity to take 2 years to sail around the world!