Like many, I watched the evening news cover the recent rescue by the US Navy of a family and their small children from a sailboat 900 miles off the Mexican coast. As is typical of most “mainstream” news coverage, the reporting left me with more questions than answers. I recently found some of these answers in a very interesting post on a blog that I follow by a couple that are out walking the walk everyday. As avid followers of sailing blogs (because why else would you be reading this blog? We don’t do beach vollyball photos here!) I thought you all may be interested in their perspective:
Life On The Hook
A Couple On A Boat In Search Of Perpetual Summer
People can be stupid. Anyone who is familiar with cruisers knows the level of preparation that the average cruiser takes and the seriousness with which they embark on a passage. The fact is that the US Navy and Coast Guard have been rescuing people at sea since they were established. There are similar services for people in national parks, etc. What if the family had been 3 days into the back country in a national park and had their tents and food supply damaged by wildlife and then had a sick child? There would have been a chopper in there in a nanosecond. It is a benefit of living in the US that we can do this. Don’t like it? Move. We still give a damn and we still have some souls with enough chutzpah to think out of a box. They inspire us. I’d much rather spend my tax dollars on this service than most of the crap we spend it on. Fair winds and following winds to them. Sorry for the negative approach but this story gets me fired up.
Sorry. One last thought. A recent story I saw on news.com.au was of a woman who was flying from Seattle to SoCal. She was 18 weeks pregnant. She had an emergency in flight. Fortunately there was a nurse on board but by the time they landed at their destination and got her to a medical facility, she had lost the baby. Was she an idiot for flying when pregnant, where you can’t get to a hospital from 30,000 feet? Should she have stayed in a tent outside the hospital, playing it safe just in case, during her pregnancy? Was the crew of the Maersk Alabama foolish to take a large ship in an area known for pirate activity? Should Maersk repay the US government for the rescue operation? How does a company operating on the high seas in international waters get protection from the US military? What is the difference? Does it have to do with commerce? Are we only privileged to these sorts of extreme rescues only when we are doing private business? Basically, the US government subsidized Maersk for a very expensive rescue. Anyway, I think these are valid questions but the point of this particular incident is that it is a long standing policy of the US to aid US vessels in distress on the ocean and it doesn’t matter what they are there for. This family was doing something they had done for 7 years and were seasoned cruisers.