Solo Dutch teens,troubled Norwegian sailors,Greek Tornado adventurers

by Nancy Knudsen, Editor on 26 Jan 2012 So Dutch teen, solo sailor Laura Dekker, aged 16 years and four months, has completed her circumnavigation to become the world's youngest. There'll be a week of publicity in the world press, but unless she has a super PR team, she'll fade from view, and if her blogs are anything to go by, that's how she wants it – so far anyway. Fame is very seductive and can also be very lucrative, so we'll have to wait and see.

Australia's Jessica Watson, so revered by fellow Aussies, has had an excellent PR team to keep her in the limelight and leverage her fame for commercial success – everything from tourism promotion to advertising cherries. She might have lost her (unofficial) world title now as the youngest sailor to circumnavigate the world (a little short but we won't go into that) but she will still be honoured in her home country as an iconic young heroine. It's hard to see that happening any time soon for Laura in the Netherlands.

Jarle Andhoey is the other sailor in the news at the moment – the Norwegian tearaway TV celebrity who sailed last year to the Antarctic without the relevant permissions and hit world headlines when his boat and three crew were lost while he was riding a quad bike to the South Pole. Now he's taking a second illegal voyage down there and the authorities are out to catch him.

There's a buzz out there on the world's oceans with so much going on. This week we tell of two Greek sailors who sailed the Aegean in a Tornado, then how another fatality in a dinghy gives heavy relevance to John Jamieson's article on three ways to approach your yacht by dinghy, great cruisers' workshops going on in Annapolis, and Sail4Cancer in Britain is looking for volunteers.

The European Yachts of the Year for 2012 have been announced, read about how much berthing tax you will now pay the Italian government to sail Italy, and Jack Binder tells about a very different kind of cruisers' adventure.

This is just the beginning, so skip down the headlines to find what catches your interest, and...

Sweet sailing!