The 15-year-old who sailed round the world alone

In 2011, Dutch teenager Laura Dekker became the youngest person to sail alone round the world. Her account, of which this is an extract, bubbles with a youthful verve and passion.

In 2009, the English sailing community was galvanised by the arrival on the East Coast of a 14-year-old single-hander from Holland, writes Tom Cunliffe. This was Laura Dekker, skippering a small yacht she had bought with borrowed money.

She was placed in care and refused leave to return home in her boat until her father, party to the whole event, came over. He declared his confidence in his daughter and she completed her voyage alone.

Later that year, Laura announced her intention to sail round the world single-handed in a 38-footer she would finance though her own efforts. Now it was the Dutch authorities who tried to ban the project, but after a good deal of manoeuvring they too relented and she finally set out from Portugal in 2010.

One year and five months later, Laura became the youngest solo circumnavigator at the age of 16.

This extract from her book, One Girl One Dream, (Harper Collins, New Zealand) describes part of her 6,000-mile passage from Australia to South Africa. It bubbles with youth, and anybody feeling jaded with their life should read it right now.Better than that, go out and buy the book. I did. I couldn’t put it down.

Finally, some wind, but it’s so dark and grey outside that it looks as though the clouds will envelop Guppy at any moment. There’s a 4m swell and I’ve been having squall after squall breaking over me for the past two weeks. The wind isn’t constant for more than an hour at a time, which entails adjusting the sails and the course regularly.

I dive into a book so that I can forget everything around me, but every time I get up there are dark clouds, drizzle and little wind. During my crossing from the Galapagos to the Marquesas Islands, I’d covered 2,600 miles in the same time it’s taken to cover only 1,500 now. This ocean hasn’t done me any favours, and I’ll be glad to leave it behind me.

Guppy is running at three knots and bobbing along like a useless rubber duck on the high swell. At the top of the waves, I have an infinite view of endless grey sea that changes to drizzle on the horizon. I have to accept it because I can’t change it anyway, and things are bound to get better.

When day breaks, a few squalls pass by, causing the wind to come first from behind and then head-on, just to give me a hard time, before falling away altogether.

This isn’t much fun with the high swell and the cross-seas . . . Guppy is rolling very heavily and the sails are flapping in all directions, but once the squalls have disappeared on the horizon I feel it – WIND! Wonderful wind. Guppy flies forward and is making real speed for the first time since Darwin. It’s going well and she’s jumping over the waves at seven knots like a young foal, and looks as though she’s enjoying it as much as her skipper.

A glance at the solar panels shows me that there is work to do. I can start cleaning them all over again as it seems to have become a regular shithouse for all my feathered friends. Not good, and I’m pissed off about all the lost current that I need so much.

Seeing that I’ve hardly had any sun, Guppy’s batteries have not been charging optimally, which means that I can make only limited use of my radar and beloved SSB radio, which both need a lot of electricity. A pity because my SSB offers me something else to do other than staring over the grey sea and skies.

http://www.yachtingworld.com/voyages/crossing-the-indian-ocean-single-handed-dutch-solo-sailor-laura-dekker-in-her-own-words-109746