Jessica Watson

Jessica Watson, OAM is an Australian sailor who completed a southern hemisphere solo circumnavigation at the age of 16. Departing Sydney onOctober 2009, Watson headed northeast crossing the equator in the Pacific Ocean before crossing the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. She returned to Sydney on 15160May 2010, three days before her 17th birthday. The voyage was shorter than the required 21,600 nautical miles to be considered a global circumnavigation, and Watson never claimed the voyage to be an attempt at such, preferring the less formal term around the world. In recognition of her achievement Watson was named the 2011 Young Australian of the Year, and the following year was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia. She currently resides in Buderim, Queensland.

Watson was born on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. The second of four children of New Zealander couple Roger and Julie Watson, who moved to Australia in 1987, she has dual Australian and New Zealander citizenship. She has an older sister and younger brother and sister . All four took sailing lessons as children, and the family went on to live on board a 16metre cabin cruiser for five years, the children being home schooled via distance learning. Later they lived on a purposebuilt double decker bus for some time. When Watson was eleven and they were still living on the boat, her mother read Jesse Martins book Lionheart A Journey of the Human Spirit to the children as a bedtime story. This led to Watson forming the ambition, at age twelve, to sail around the world too.

Source: Wikipedia