Enska 2013
Laura Sails
Laura Dekker, a 16-year-old sailor from the Netherlands who has become the youngest person ever to sail around the globe single- handed, has threatened never to return to the Netherlands because of the government’s resistance to her adventures.
Laura arrived on the Caribbean island of St Maarten on Saturday aboard her 38ft boat, Guppy, and admitted she sometimes wondered what she was doing during her voyage. She also described her battles with the authorities, who wanted to prevent her setting sail, as a frightening and traumatic experience and said she was discussing with her parents the possibility of moving abroad, most likely to New Zealand.
When Laura sailed into harbor at the St Maarten yacht club late on Saturday night, aged 16 years and 123 days, she was met by crowds of well- wishers and stepped on to the dock accompanied by her parents, her sister and grandparents.
“There were moments where I was like, ‘What the hell am I doing out here? ’ but I never wanted to stop,” she told reporters after struggling against high seas and heavy winds on the final 41-day leg from Cape Town, South Africa. “It’s a dream, and I wanted to do it.”
The Dutch courts originally refused to allow Laura to embark on the voyage when she was 14, and she was put under the guardianship of Dutch protection agencies on the grounds that she was too young to look after herself at sea. She finally won the battle with the courts in July 2010 and set sail from St Maarten on 20 January last year.
Laura was born to parents living on a boat near the coast of New Zealand and first sailed solo when six years old, around which time her parents divorced and she went to live with her father. Friends describe her as intelligent, independent and disciplined. She has said her dream of crossing the globe began at the age of 10.
She celebrated her 16th birthday during
the trip, eating doughnuts for breakfast after spending time at port with her father and friends in Darwin, Australia.
The journey back included stops in the Canary Islands, Panama, Galápagos, Tonga, Fiji, Bora Bora and Australia. She told how her boat was drenched by a whale off South Africa and a flying fish slapped into her head in the Caribbean.
“I became good friends with my boat,” she said. “I learned a lot about myself.”
Laura says that now, after sailing around the world, with difficult port approaches, storms, dangerous reefs, and the full responsibility of keeping herself and Guppy safe, she feels that the nightmares the government organizations put her through, were totally unfair. “I am seriously thinking about not going home. Of course I will discuss this with my parents.”
In contrast with her discomfort at the interventions of the authorities, she said that at sea she felt at rest. “I especially enjoyed the long passages over the Indian and Atlantic,” she said.
Her entry on Christmas Day explained her love of solitude: “This way I don’t have to go visit the family and be so kind to everyone, I don’t have to eat dinner, even a good one, if I don’t feel like it just to be polite, and what about all that talking, talking ... Guppy is a very good listener and she never contradicts me.”
“Laura has tremendous willpower and ambition,” said lawyer Peter de Lange, who advised Laura and her father during the run-up to the trip, in an interview with the Volkskrant newspaper. “Her wish to do this was something that came from her heart and soul and no one was going to stop her.”
