Family decides to travel around the world on a POS sailboat with their young children and fail miser

You are good, sir, very good. You ate Macalu alive.

 

First off one this happened in international waters so laws didn't come into effect but I am pretty sure if you were keeping kids in a similar situation in US jurisdiction CPS would probably be looking into it. Anyway the point is is that there is a principle behind these laws why we treat kids differently that adults.

And yes of course people would be more subdued if it was the wife that got sick because she is an adult. As far as how much of a stink would've been if they had made it. I'm sure there would've been some stink. People generally don't like it when children are put into danger. There has been controversy regarding a few cases where 14 and 13 year olds have tried to do solo around the world sailing trips. The Dutch government blocked an attempt in 2009 by a 13 year old Dutch citizen from doing so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Dekker

 

the father is a Coast Guard licensed captain whose family has lived on the sailboat for 7 years. i'm sure he's more competent than any of us at gauging the risks and more than prepared for such a trip. he had medication available for his child. what he didn't expect is to lose complete control of the boat.

i bet there are hundreds of these types of trips annually that you don't hear about because nothing went wrong. this is their lifestyle and i'm not going to condemn them for it.

 

Lol that thread was hilarious.

 

Doesn't that give you a head ache?

 

Actually it clears my sinus, snot flying everywhere!...
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No point in billing the family...those morons couldn't afford 1/10th of the bill.

 

I don't even let my one-year-old on a boat, considering the risks involved. Let alone taking off away from civilization like that. It's an adult's choice to take risks, but not to bring along little kids.

 

You guys realize that there are tons of families that do this successfully. You just don't hear about because everything turned out ok. Way too much overreaction.

I don't see anything wrong. Poor execution but nothing wrong with choosing to cruise the world on a sailboat

 

Many people doing it doesn't justifiy anything. You're still risking the well-being of your little children. I just don't understand why someone would put their children in such danger, especially at that age.

 

But, you see, the guy had coast guard training!

 

This. Hundreds of people climb Everest and most are very well prepared but that doesn't mean there are some very inherent risk in doing so.

Adults are free to put their lives into danger but the standards for adults and children are different.

 

does your family fly or drive? you're endangering their lives as well except i'd argue that what you do is riskier. you're putting your family's lives in the hands of strangers. you assume the engineers, mechanics, quality control inspectors have done their jobs properly. you assume and hope that the pilot or other drivers on the road are of sound mind, competent, and not under the influence of drugs. you have no control of those things yet you think it's perfectly safe to put them in that situation.

planes fall out of sky due to mechanical failures, the toddlers on those planes die. people get in wrecks because the other driver was texting or drunk, the toddlers in those wrecks die. these things happen more often but nobody says, "Those idiot parents. Why did they have a baby on board!?"

 

You really think driving in a car on a city street and flying on a commercial airplane is equivalent to sailing around the world in a 36' long sailboat?

 

that's what you got out of that? they all have their risks. this event is just an anomaly that people are blowing out of proportion.

 

Stupid decision by the family, but the uproar is silly.

Really just a waste of time worrying about what others are doing with their children that hurts nobody but themselves. If the family was doing something that affected others, then sure, uproar is fine. But in this case, they're on their own. If they did something wrong that the authorities can deal with great...if not, then great.

My parents put be on a horse when I was 4 years old...the horse could have easily gone nuts and killed me. Would have been a dumb decision if something happened to me, but **** happens all the time.

Moral of the story: Don't be stupid.

 

It's probably true that the rich, hippy NoCal family that decides to not vaccinate their kids is probably doing a lot more harm to the collective society than this family that used up some of our tax dollars with stupidity.

 

some risks are not the same as other risks

this event was an anomaly because the inherent risk to the kids are far greater than putting your kids on a plane.

 

With that mentality, then what's the need for CPS? It's people's own kids and I guess that means the kids are the property of the parents to do whatever they want with them.

Part of the uproar is that it was a dumb situation that the parents shouldn't have put their children into and cause an expensive rescue situation that the public has to fund. But I still think most of it is because the kids shouldn't be in that situation to begin with.