Dekker Sets Off Across Atlantic

After two months of waiting for the hurricane season to end, 15-year-old Dutch teen Laura Dekker set off from the Cape Verde Islands a week ago, for the first ocean crossing in her planned circumnavigation. Dekker and her Jeanneau 38 Gin Fizz Guppy are 800 miles into the 2,200-mile leg from the Cape Verdes to St. Martin. Dekker, you might remember, last saw St. Martin when she ran away from home to go boat shopping by using her New Zealand passport — she has both Dutch and Kiwi citizenship — to evade European authorities who had made her a ward of the state. While previous teen circumnavigators set out on east-about routes, Dekker, like Zac Sunderland, is doing a tradewinds-and-canals lap of the globe that she expects will take around two years.

For those who’ve missed our previous coverage, Dekker’s route has been filled with obstacles up until this point. Since announcing her attempt two years ago, Dekker has had an uphill battle to get this far. Born in New Zealand during her parents’ circumnavigation, Dekker claims to have been sailing her own 23-ft boat in Friesland waters where she encountered her first problems with resistance to her efforts when lock-operators were not always willing to allow such a young girl in her own boat to transit. Undeterred and supported by her family, she spent the following summer vacation sailing in and around the islands on the Wadden Sea, and shortly after revealed her big dream to become the youngest ever to go around the world.

Intensive lessons on navigation and safety followed, and then Dekker’s father instructed his daughter to sail to England and back on her own to show him what she was capable of. That trip was a harbinger of the official resistance she would later experience when, on her arrival in the UK, she was detained by the port authorities who judged it too dangerous for a 13-year-old to be at sea alone. Looking to thwart the trip, the port authorities called Dick Dekker and asked him to accompany his daughter on the trip home.

The elder Dekker refused to comply with the request, so the authorities placed Laura in a children’s home. Ultimately Dekker changed his mind and went to the UK to collect Laura. But when he allowed Laura to sail back on her own anyway, the British police contacted their Dutch counterparts, who alerted the country’s social services’ youth care bureau. With the family then on the radar of social services in the Netherlands, Laura was was made a ward of the state for over a year. With the support of her father, and finally her initially reluctant mother, Dekker got underway two months ago after a Dutch Children’s Court gave her permission to leave.