Australian teenager Jessica Watson, the youngest person to sail around the globe solo, will skipper the youngest ever crew in the Sydney to Hobart blue water yacht classic, she said yesterday.

Watson, 17, will helm the Sydney 38 class boat “Another Challenge” in this year’s race through the notorious area of the Pacific Ocean off eastern Australia, leading a crew with an average age of 19 and whose oldest member will be just 21.

Watson, who was only 16 when she circumnavigated the globe alone in an epic 210-day voyage that ended in Sydney last May, will head a youthful crew of six other young Australians and three Britons in the 628 nautical mile race.

“I am absolutely delighted to be working with such a dynamic and motivated group of young sailors,” she said as she announced her new challenge at Sydney’s Cruising Yacht Club.

Watson, who faced fierce criticism that her round-the-world adventure was too dangerous for a teenager, said the crew would take extra care to meet all safety requirements for the next Sydney to Hobart that starts on December 26.

“We are all doing our sea survival courses, even though only half of the crew are required to do it,” she said. “We will be doing navigation courses even though we have our designated navigator on board.”

But for her next big adventure, the breezy and smiling teen from Queensland state will have to look after nine other people as well as herself, forcing a change in her skippering style.

“I’m told I need to get a bit nastier,” she said. “Getting into racing mode after cruising, I’ve been saying, ‘Please, let’s throw in a tack,’ and five minutes later giving everyone a rest.

“I’ve been getting a bit of a thumbs down from our coach, who says there are no please and thankyous and it’s got to be ‘now’.”

Watson, who will meet the minimum Sydney to Hobart age requirement of 18 in May, is aiming to wrest the event’s youth record away from her coach Chris Lewin, who led a team of university students in the race in 2004.

Her crew will include Mike Perham, a British round-the-world sailor who is the second youngest person after Watson to sail solo, unaided and non-stop around the world. He managed his trip in 157 days, two months faster than Watson.

“He has been giving me a hard time about how long I took to get around the world,” she joked.