Teenager Laura Dekker completes solo sail
She played the flute and shared her boat with cockroaches but why won’t 16-year-old Laura Dekker, the youngest person to sail solo around the world, be recognised by the record books?
It was a controversial endeavour from the start – a teenager sailing solo around the world.
But as Laura Dekker completed her challenge in St. Maarten dozens of people jumped and cheered as she waved, wept and then walked across the dock accompanied by her mother, father, sister and grandparents.
Speaking to journalists the teenager said: “There were moments where I was like, ‘What the hell am I doing out here?’ but I never wanted to stop. It’s a dream, and I wanted to do it.”
Dekker claims she is the youngest sailor to complete a round-the-world voyage, but Guinness World Records and the World Sailing Speed Record Council did not verify the claim, saying they no longer recognise records for youngest sailors to discourage dangerous attempts.
Dutch authorities tried to block Dekker’s trip, arguing she was too young to risk her life, while school officials complained she should be in a classroom.
Dekker said she was born to parents living on a boat near the coast of New Zealand and said she first sailed solo at 6 years old. At 10, she said, she began dreaming about crossing the globe.
She celebrated her 16th birthday during the trip, eating doughnuts for breakfast after spending time at port with her father and friends the night before in Darwin, Australia.
The teenager covered more than 27-thousand nautical miles (50,004 kilometres) on a trip with stops that sound like a skim through a travel magazine: the Canary Islands, Panama, the Galapagos Islands, Tonga, Fiji, Bora Bora, Australia, South Africa and now, St. Maarten, from which she set out on January 20th, 2011.
The flute, cockroaches and a near miss
Unlike other young sailors who recently crossed the globe, Dekker repeatedly anchored at ports along the way to sleep, study and repair her 38-foot (11.5-meter) sailboat.
During her trip, she went surfing, scuba diving, cliff diving and discovered a new hobby: playing the flute, which she said in her weblog was easier to play than a guitar in bad weather.
Dekker also complained about custom clearings, boat inspections, ripped sails, heavy squalls, a wet and salty bed, a near-collision with two cargo ships and the presence of some persistent stowaways: cockroaches.
Highlights of her trip include 47 days of sailing the Indian Ocean, which left her with unsteady legs when she docked in Durban, South Africa, where she walked up and down the pier several times for practice.
Dekker launched her trip two months after Abby Sunderland, a 16-year-old US sailor, was rescued in the middle of the Indian Ocean during a similar attempt.
Jessica Watson of Australia completed a 210-day solo voyage at age 16, a few months older than Dekker.