I received this book as a gift my senior year of high school from the teacher who supervised our literary magazine. I read it back then and loved it. From that reading, I mostly remember descriptions of the author sailing into foreign ports, hanging out with fellow sailors, and eating fruit. It made me want to follow in her footsteps.
This time around I noticed things I didn't pay attention to the first time. The way her father manipulated her into this "adventure." The way, after she begins her voyage, he isn't content to live through her and goes off on dangerous adventures of his own, checking in every now and then to spur her on or admonish her for slowness, for risking the loss of her world record, to be the youngest person to sail alone around the world. Aebi offers an ambivalent view of him. Like any stunt book, this one ends with a recap of how she has changed, how the challenge has made her a better person. She would never have undertaken it were it not for her father. On the other hand, she could easily have died out on the ocean.
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