Laura Dekker Moving to New Zealand

Laura Dekker, the Dutch 16-year-old who became the world’s youngest solo circumnavigator (with stops) in January, has spent the last several months enjoying the the lush life in the South Pacific aboard her Jeanneau Gin Fizz Guppy, and is now bound for her birth country of New Zealand. Dekker and a crewmember left Tahiti on Sunday on a direct route to Whangarei.

Dekker was born in Whangarei during her parents’ seven-year cruise, and now disenchanted with the treatment she received by The Netherland’s government prior to her departure, she plans to make the port her new home. But it appears leaving the fabled isles was a little more difficult for her than she’d anticipated. "It feels kind of strange now to leave these Pacific islands that I’ve come to know so well and try to settle in the place where I was born," she wrote in her blog. "It’s a place I know in my heart but just haven’t really seen with the eyes I’m looking with now. After these years sailing all over the world, I’m on my final trip to New Zealand. It’s strange but I’m also really looking forward to it."