It was first done by Joshua Slocomb aboard Spray
Robin Lee Graham aboard Dove when he was 16
Tabya Aebi did it in Varuna, a 26 ft boat when she was 18
I grew up reading of these adventures and many other similar ones. One of our sisters is aboard her 36 ft boat picking her way to Phuket to settle and live (she loved her first visit there so much)She left from San Francisco when she was 80-something. When she got to Midway island she developed a tooth abcess and had to turn back to Hawaii to have the VA take care of it, took days to get there. Like anything these adventures take a lot of experience and preparation. They can be life change at the very least, certainly life threatening as well. Or you can stay home and watch TV. When I was as young as 10-12 I'd get on a boat by myself at 6 am and sail down the coast till dark, go ashore and find out where I was and find a phone; "Hi mom, guess where I am?" The next day I'd hitchhike back and sail home. You become your best friend, chef, baker,doctor, dentist, mechanic, sail maker, navigator (we used to do this all with a sextant and tables in big books of sun and planetary positions)if you were dependant on a calculator (HP41-c) you had several of them as backups sealed in vacuum bags, batteries in separate vac bags. You did not take anything with you that you did not have personal experience in repairing yourself.
Unfortunately the Southern Ocean is the route to take. What most people would consider rouge waves are the norm down there, one right after the other. I talked to a guy who was in an around the world race on a 40 ft boat. He was on the night shift and when he came on deck the sight was surreal; 30-40 ft waves, nicely formed, they had the spreader lights on and the spinaker flying, the captain had Flight of the Valkries playing full blast on the cockpit speakers as they surfed this big sailboat on the waves.
We used to say "there's two kinds of people, boat people and others"
As to our young lady in distress, I wasn't there so I have no idea what her true life experience is, training and preparation. There are plenty more books on the subject than the few I mentioned. I do remember Robin Graham quite well because the experience changed him. He had difficulties integrating back into the everyday world. He felt mundane life was a complete waste of one's time on Earth, all superficial. He nearly killed himself a few times. He married and they moved into a log cabin in the northern wilderness. It was survival conditions. I stopped following his life after that.
Some young people are more adult than many so called adults, mature and wise to real life issues.