Dedication
If you want to see the other side of the world, you can do two things: turn the world upside down or travel there yourself.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to everyone who supported me — my sponsors, family, and especially Dad. I couldn’t have accomplished the things I did without them. I got to know myself, learnt about the world and fulfilled the dream of my life.
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Foreword by Tania Aebi
How it all began
At last!
The journey begins
Portugal, Portimão
Portugal, Portimão–Gibraltar: 200 nautical miles
Gibraltar
Gibraltar–Canary Islands: 650 nautical miles
Lanzarote
Lanzarote–Gran Canaria: 130 nautical miles
Gran Canaria
Gran Canaria–Cape Verde Islands: 780 nautical miles
Sal
Sal–São Nicolau: 85 nautical miles
São Nicolau
São Nicolau–Saint Martin: 2223 nautical miles
Saint Martin
New Year!
Stad Amsterdam
Saint Martin–Îles des Saintes: 154 nautical miles
Îles des Saintes
Îles des Saintes–Dominica: 20 nautical miles
Dominica
Dominica–Bonaire: 450 nautical miles
Bonaire
Bonaire–San Blas Islands: 670 nautical miles
San Blas Islands
San Blas Islands–Panama: 80 nautical miles
Colón
Colón–Panama, Panama Canal: 43 nautical miles
Panama
Panama–Las Perlas: 50 nautical miles
Las Perlas
Las Perlas–Galápagos: 900 nautical miles
Galápagos
Galápagos–Hiva Oa: 3000 nautical miles
Hiva Oa
Hiva Oa–Tahiti: 700 nautical miles
Tahiti
Tahiti–Moorea: 18 nautical miles
Moorea
Moorea–Bora Bora: 130 nautical miles
Bora Bora
Bora Bora–Tonga: 1300 nautical miles
Tonga
Tonga–Fiji: 470 nautical miles
Suva
Suva–Vanuatu: 600 nautical miles
Port Vila
Port Vila–Australia: 2400 nautical miles
Darwin
Darwin–South Africa: 6000 nautical miles
Durban
Durban–Port Elizabeth: 420 nautical miles
Port Elizabeth
Port Elizabeth–Cape Town: 470 nautical miles
Cape Town
Cape Town–Saint Martin: 5800 nautical miles
The finish!
Picture Section
Afterword
Appendix: Guppy
Copyright
Foreword
One of my favorite quotes ever comes from one of Laura’s sailing heroes, Bernard Moitessier, the legendary Frenchman who participated in the first singlehanded race around the world in the late sixties. Non-stop. Back then, ship to shore communications were primitive, and when he passed Cape Horn and was about to head back north to the finish line, he had no idea he was in first place. What he did know was that he wasn’t ready to face life ashore in northern Europe, and so he made the famous decision to continue sailing west back to Polynesia. Off the Cape of Good Hope, he used a slingshot to fire a message home onto the deck of a tanker: ‘I am continuing non-stop towards the Pacific Islands because I am happy at sea, and perhaps also, to save my soul.’
Laura and I are not his only fans. This quote resonated with decades of sailors who wanted to escape the industrial machine and surged south to tropical climates on boats, to catch rainwater, eat fish, rice and bananas, navigate by sun and stars. It was a simple, healthy life that beckoned to many a kindred spirit troubled by the demands of civilisation, and more than 40 years later, one young lady had to fight long and hard for her right to join these ranks and happily sail around the world. And, when Laura Dekker finally broke free to busily prove all the naysayers wrong, I cheered her on.
She was 14 years old when she started, 16 at the end of her solo circumnavigation. If she’d had it her way, she would have left Holland at 13, right after sailing a 22-footer across the English Channel alone, before announcing her dream and intention landed her in the custody of child services. Three other young solo sailors — two 16-year-old boys, and one girl — were successfully completing their own circumnavigations at the time, with corporate sponsorships and hero’s welcomes in the US, UK, and Australia — but Laura’s story sparked an international debate about irresponsible parents, foolish daughters, and how young is too young. A 13-, 14-, then 15-year-old girl who wanted to be alone at sea needed medication, headlines cried, not indulgence.
Opinions were broadcast around the world. But, instead of crumbling under the weight of so much doubt about her motivation, maturity, or readiness, Laura decided to keep going, even after the boat she originally wanted to go with was confiscated. In between fighting the courts and getting a little older, she purchased and refurbished a super-sweet 38-foot boat for the voyage.
For over a year, at a time during which most 14-year-olds worry way too much about what other people think and what to wear, this amazing girl kept doggedly pursuing a dream, where the greatest challenge was turning out to be not singlehanded sailing but the strong opposition standing between her and the ocean.
Everyone was doing their jobs — the older and wiser people who profess to know what’s best for a young girl, and the teenager, professing to know what was best for herself. She held fast, and when the blockade finally dissolved, without the flash of major sponsors and support, she took off. Only 14, the battling had taken longer than her entire subsequent sail around the world.
I followed this little pilgrim’s progress, and because I’d circumnavigated alone as a young girl and was now a mother, media types kept calling to ask for my thoughts. At the time, my two teenaged boys were being inspired by the pleasure principle more than any kind of passion that wasn’t mainstream, and I thought this lack of imagination was worrisome. So, while allowing for normal parental fears and concerns, because that’s what we do, I also couldn’t help admiring Laura’s spunk, how she was setting a new standard of courage and determination.
If we all feared the same things, and if nobody was willing to take a risk for what they believed in, the world would be a very boring place indeed. In fact, we’d still all be in caves cringing from scary flames. So many conventional young people make decisions that lead to tragic endings (usually after too much of the pleasure principle) that hardly make it out of local newspapers. I couldn’t understand the fuss over this girl’s dream to sail around the world — a decision that is never made and carried out impulsively, without a lot of serious thought, focused planning and preparation — and why it was meeting with such vocal resistance. I could only imagine the relief Laura must have felt on the day she finally sailed out of that Dutch port and pointed the bow south. Moitessier would have understood. ‘You do not ask a tame seagull why it needs to disappear from time to time toward the open sea. It goes, that’s all.’
But, we live in different times, and only seagulls have the luxury of disappearing at sea. Modern sailors are not Bernard Moitessier, sending messages to loved ones with slingshots aimed at passing tankers. They keep daily blogs and use satellite phones to call home. GPS and chart plotters provide up-to-the-minute positions and EPIRBs pinpoint them immediately in the event of a disaster. All this can be a double-edged sword. At the same time that technology has made the high seas feel safer and
more accessible to everyone, it also keeps the sailor tethered to land. In the middle of the ocean, Laura was still on stage, and I got the impression she saw this as a necessary evil, the price she had to pay to fulfill her quest.
Periodically, I’d check in on her blog, see how far along she’d got. As the dots steadily tracked across one ocean after another, I visualised her flat calms becoming boring, broken equipment annoying, strong winds exciting, all part of the overall package that had once been mine. The descriptions of her adventure were also full of wonder and gratitude for having been given this opportunity. At sea, this girl was in her element, and most of the time her blog reflected utter contentment, words that strongly echoed more of Moitessier’s: ‘I am a citizen of the most beautiful nation on earth. A nation whose laws are harsh yet simple, a nation that never cheats, which is immense and without borders, where life is lived in the present. In this limitless nation, this nation of wind, light, and peace, there is no other ruler besides the sea.’
The real fly in her ointment came from land. At one point, I read, because she admitted the distractions out there were keeping her from applying herself regularly to schoolwork, she received a scolding from the rulers. Imagine that. Imagine swishing westward, hundreds of miles away from terra firma. You’ve just swatted the last mosquito that hitched a ride aboard in the last port, tweaked the sails, enjoyed a few hours of cockpit time, and are maybe thinking about dinner, when you go below to make another blog posting about how lucky you feel to be out there — the modern equivalent of a log entry — and a message comes in. You are being chastised, and not by your parents. Some governmental authority is commanding you to return to your schoolwork, or face consequences upon your return from a singlehanded circumnavigation, for crying out loud. Total killjoy. It made me feel embarrassed to be an adult.
Her story defines valour, and comes to us at yet another time in history when words about right and wrong talk way louder than actions all around the planet. Laura is definitely not too young to teach her elders a thing or two about optimism, perseverance and true individuality, even as over-analysed public opinion tried to stuff her back in a box. She escaped and got out there, very happily, freely, and impressively living her dream.
People worried about her being at sea; she worried about her homecoming. What next? What happens after you’ve spent a significant percentage of a short life single-mindedly pursuing one goal, and it’s over?
When I finished my solo circumnavigation in the late eighties, at the age of 21 — an old maid compared with Laura — my fantasy was to have a house in the country, gardens and children. After sailing to all those islands and countries, meeting the people who belonged to worlds I was just passing through, I wanted a place where I belonged, a community of my own.
Time passes and is measured by what we do with it. In October 2012, nine months after Laura successfully and proudly sailed into Saint Martin, she came to visit me, my house, gardens, and average young-adult boys — who were a little older than her and home from college for a visit. We went for a walk around the hilltop, across fields and into woods crisp with the colours of autumn and foliage littering the paths connecting the part of the world I call home, and shared stories. I felt a certain closeness with her that transcended the difference in our ages, the generational gap with this feisty girl I would be proud to call a daughter inhabited by a timeless watery place somewhere beyond the wooded horizon and words, to a place known by seagulls, Bernard Moitessier, and those who come from all walks of life who want to live fully in the present with wind, light and peace.
As she had written in her blog, she had been back to Holland for some talks, appearances, and time with family, before continuing on to sail back to New Zealand where she had citizenship, planning to build a life there. Now, she was performing the expected duties — compiling a book, figuring out a way to finish up schooling — but was unsure about what to do next. What does one do after becoming a 16-year-old solo circumnavigator?
I could remember how the elation of my own last days at sea before making landfall in New York had been dampened by the very same concern, the pure joy of accomplishing such a huge challenge mitigated by the melancholy of knowing I had just lived my greatest adventure with the most beautiful nation on earth. For two and a half years, the sea had given me the gift of clarity, of knowing exactly what needed to be done every day — whatever it took, in a seamanlike way, to head west and get back home. As I was about to be swept up in life ashore, a young adult faced with many paths into the future, leading in all possible directions, I could see that things would never again be so simple.
The beauty of a journey is how it really has a beginning, a middle and an end. Once I returned to New York, it was important to sit down, write the book, and process the whole experience into the black and white of words; a complete story told for once and for all, that could be put aside before moving on. Meeting and talking with Laura, I saw a very practical and down-to-earth young lady who would do the same for herself, then capably figure out what came next.
A much older Moitessier was never able to reconcile himself with Europe, the politics of Western civilisation. He made several attempts, but it was always a painful struggle, with him torn between responsibility to relationships and a lifelong yearning to be out at sea again, unencumbered by societal expectations, the only place where he ever felt true happiness. ‘A sailor’s joys are as simple as a child’s,’ he said.
When you’re a child sailor, you can know the best of both worlds, but no matter who we are and what we’ve done, we all face the pitfalls of growing up someday. Laura gets to do this with the companionship of a really nice boat, and on the strength of a major success that smashed conventional wisdom about the limitations of youth, proving what focus, guts and determination can accomplish. Once again, I wish her all the best and success, wherever the voyage leads as she resets her focus on new goals, and plots and sails a course from this remarkable adolescence into adulthood.
Tania Aebi
Vermont, April 2013
How it all began
I am Laura and I was born in Whangarei, New Zealand. My parents were sailing around the world at the time and had been in New Zealand for two years. I became the youngest member of the crew when we made our way to Australia. They wanted to take their time to see as much of the world as possible. My sister Kim was born three years after me, and our 12-metre yacht eventually became too cramped for a family with two little girls. So we sailed back to the Netherlands where we moved into a real house for the first time. My parents’ journey had taken them seven years, and it was hard for Dad to live on firm land. He immediately started on the construction of an even bigger boat: a 20-metre, seaworthy Norwegian fishing cutter with enough room for everyone. Unfortunately, my parents’ marriage broke up and, at the age of six, I chose to stay with my father. We lived in a caravan for some time while he worked on the new boat.
As you can see, my life started very differently to that of my schoolmates. This was evident in the drawings I did as a child. While they drew little houses with trees, I drew boats on the water; while they played in the playground, I played on the water with homemade boats and anything that would float. Living in a caravan with Dad working on a new boat was normal life for me. Within a year of moving onto land, I was back in a boat on the water and it would stay that way. Recognising my interest in sailing, my father bought me an Optimist for my sixth birthday. This is the classic sailing craft for children, and I spent almost every day on it, both in summer and in winter. Later, when I was eight, an acquaintance gave me a Mirror; a great little boat. By now I was crazy about sailing and took part in youth sailing competitions. After a while, I wasn’t allowed to compete anymore because I won too often, so I started taking part in the adult sailing class events. I sometimes even sailed against my dad, who was a fanatical sailor himself. I didn’t win as often, but I continued to take great pleasure in sailing.
By now I wanted my own cabin yacht. T
here was a Hurley 700 in our marina that was hardly ever used. One day I approached the owner and asked him if I could try it out. He agreed and, as a 10-year-old, I made my first long-distance solo trip. I sailed his boat across the inland waters in the north of the Netherlands, from the Ijsselmeer — the largest inland lake in the country — to Friesland and the Wadden Islands in the North Sea.
I soon realised that I wanted to sail around the world, just like my parents had. I also knew that I wanted to leave as soon as possible, and this meant that I needed a seaworthy boat of my own. When I was 11, I bought my own boat, a seaworthy Hurley 700. Dad paid for it on condition that I paid back half. I took on all sorts of jobs in order to pay off the boat: two newspaper rounds, cleaning jobs in the afternoons and, at the weekends, work in a chandlery. Anything at all so long as it paid. I even earned money performing tricks on a unicycle!
When I was 13 I sailed my seaworthy Hurley 700 single-handedly to England. Customs clearance was no problem, but after a couple of days in England I suddenly received a visit from the police. Afterwards, I learnt that one of my girlfriends’ parents had gone to the Dutch police because they felt I shouldn’t have been allowed to sail on my own to England. The Dutch authorities then contacted the British police, who in turn asked my dad to come to England to sail back with me. Once he arrived, the authorities handed the responsibility for my welfare back to my dad and he allowed me to sail solo back to the Netherlands.
In the meantime, I had started making preparations for my round-the-world voyage. My 7-metre yacht was a little small for the trip, and I needed to get hold of a bigger boat. My faithful Hurley 700 was soon sold after a sponsor offered me a Hurley 800. My father and I got cracking to ready the new boat for my long journey. Through the Wereldschool, an educational programme for Dutch children living abroad, we also arranged everything that was necessary for me to continue my schooling during my voyage. In the Netherlands it is compulsory for children to attend a real school until they are 16. If kids want to take a day off, they have to ask permission weeks in advance and then it is usually turned down. If they take the day off anyway, their parents get a heavy fine and, if they refuse to pay, then one of them may face prosecution. As I was planning to stop going to school, we had to see an official from the Department of Education. She didn’t understand what we were talking about and had never heard of the Wereldschool. She stated bluntly that it was compulsory for me to attend school and that Dad would be breaking the law if he allowed me to stop. In short, there was no escaping the education system in the Netherlands.
One Girl One Dream Page 1
