16-year-old to sail into record books

AN AUSTRALIAN schoolgirl is on course to become the youngest solo and unaided round-the-world sailor after re-entering Australian waters on the last leg of her epic voyage.

Jessica Watson, 16, blogged that she was approaching Western Australia and was due to pass Cape Leeuwin, the mainland’s south-western tip, yesterday as she makes her way along the southern coast towards her destination of Sydney.

“It was one of those really special moments,” Watson wrote in her latest update on Saturday. “But we’ve still got a long way to go and over the next week we will pass under the Great Australian Bight and head south to Tasmania.”