Dutch teen sailor to cross the Atlantic today

by Nancy Knudsen on 2 Dec 2010 Today's the day that Dutch/New Zealander Laura Dekker sets off for her crossing of the Atlantic, surely a momentous day even for this gutsy and experienced fifteen-year-old. For the last couple of weeks she's been anchored in the Cape Verde Islands on the island of Tarrafal, and, like any 'normal' 15-year-old, has had a girlfriend sleeping over.

Like all well-informed and prudent cruising sailors, she has been three months on the eastern side of the Atlantic, waiting for the hurricane season to be well and truly over. Her boat, Guppy, is a Gin Fizz Jeanneau, a 38ft ketch, a well seasoned, if not fast, cruising boat. She has 2200 miles to go, and the forecast is for pleasant weather and a good breeze in the next few days.

Her next destination will be Sint Maarten, the Dutch Caribbean island that Laura last saw when she ran away from home by using her New Zealand passport to evade European authorities. At that time she had reached a low point in her life, having been made a ward of the state and not allowed to start her pined for circumnavigation.

While such earlier teens as Jesse Martin, Jessica Watson, Michael Perham and Abby Sunderland set out to the east to get around the world as fast as they could using the constant gales of the Southern Ocean, Laura, like Abby's big brother Zac Sunderland, has set out on a cruising journey to the west, taking advantage of the trade winds each side of the equator. Like Zac, she will be stopping at many ports, and take around two years for her voyage.

The Background:
Laura Dekker was born on a boat – in New Zealand during her parents' circumnavigation – and when she was just six-years-old she had already mastered the control over her single-handed Optimist dinghy and was criss-crossing lakes back in the Netherlands.

Aged ten she moved up to a seven metre boat and was honing her skills in the waters of Friesland and here she encountered her first problems with the outside world with lock-operators not always willing to allow passage to such a young girl in charge of a boat on her own.

Unperturbed though, and supported by her family she spent the following summer vacation sailing in and around the islands on the Wadden Sea and shortly after she revealed her big dream to take the high seas and become the youngest ever to go around the world.

Supportive but sceptical her father told the budding world-beater that she would have to prove herself first.

Intensive lessons on navigation and safety followed and then Dad Dick Dekker dropped the news that Laura would have to sale to England and back on her own first to show him what she was capable of.
'So long on the open sea with wind, rain and waves – that will soon end any ideas of sailing the world,' recalls Dick on his daughter’s website.

Of course the opposite proved true and the compulsion to take on the biggest sailing challenge of all was stronger than ever despite the fact that Laura was only 13. But the trip to England was an omen in another way too as once Laura arrived in the UK she was detained by the port authorities.

The local authorities judged it too dangerous for a 13-year-old to be at sea alone and they sought to scupper the return leg. They telephoned the girl's father Dick Dekker and asked him to come over and accompany his daughter on the trip home.

When Mr Dekker refused to comply with the request, Lowestoft authorities placed Laura in a children's home. Ultimately Mr Dekker changed his mind and travelled to the UK to collect his daughter. But when he allowed Laura to sail back on her own anyway the British police contacted their Dutch colleagues, who alerted the social services' youth care bureau.

With the family then firmly on the radar of social services in the Netherlands the ball started rolling, the next step seeing the Child Protection Board action. She was made a ward of the state for over a year. Then, with the support always of her father, and finally of her mother who was initially reluctant, earlier this year she was given permission to leave by a Dutch Children's Court.