The Dutch government took her away from her parents, confiscated her boat, and sent psychologists to prove she was unfit — all because a thirteen-year-old girl said she was going to sail around the world alone.
Laura Dekker didn’t dream of sailing around the world the way most children dream. She didn’t see it in a movie and think it seemed exciting. She didn’t read about it in a book and decide it sounded romantic. She knew it in her bones — the way some people know their own name.
She was born knowing, because she was born at sea.
In 1995, in the harbor town of Whangarei, New Zealand, Laura entered the world aboard her parents’ sailboat, midway through their seven-year voyage around the globe. The ocean was the first thing she knew. The rhythm of waves was her lullaby. The creak of rigging and the snap of canvas were the sounds of home.
For the first five years of her life, she lived on the water. When the family returned to the Netherlands, Laura’s parents divorced. She was six. She chose to live with her father, who had begun building a seventy-foot Norwegian fishing cutter by hand at a shipyard. They lived in a caravan next to the hull. Later, they moved aboard.
For her sixth birthday, Laura received an Optimist dinghy — a tiny single-sail boat that most children use to learn the basics in calm harbors on sunny days. Laura took hers out in storms, in hail, in winds that sent other children’s parents running for shore. She sailed nearly every day, regardless of weather. She was fearless.
For her eighth birthday, she received a book — Tania Aebi’s memoir about sailing solo around the world. She read it and felt something click inside her. That was it. That was what she was going to do.
By ten, Laura had convinced a friend of her father to let her restore and use his old Hurley 700 — a proper seven-meter seaworthy sailboat. That summer, she sailed it solo around Holland and the Wadden Islands for seven weeks. She was ten years old.
By thirteen, she was preparing in earnest. She sailed the Hurley solo from the Netherlands to England — a genuine open-water crossing. When she arrived, a friend’s mother reported her to the British authorities, who contacted the Dutch police. Her father was ordered to fly to England and sail back with her.
That was the beginning of a nightmare that Laura never saw coming.
When word reached the Dutch media that a thirteen-year-old was planning to sail alone around the world, the reaction was explosive. Child welfare authorities intervened. A family court placed Laura under shared custody with the Council for Child Care, effectively removing her parents’ authority over her. The police confiscated her boat. Psychologists were brought in to evaluate her mental state.
For a time, Laura was forced to live with foster parents. She wasn’t allowed to go home.
“They actually took the responsibility of my parents over me,” Laura said years later. “There was a time where I had to live with foster parents. So I wasn’t allowed to be at home. For me, it wasn’t a fight of whether I could sail or not. This was so much more than that.”
Eight separate court cases were filed over the next ten months. Judges who, as Laura pointed out, “had no idea about boats or sailing” were asked to decide whether she was capable. The Council for Child Protection argued that a thirteen-year-old’s brain was not mature enough for two years alone at sea. The entire country debated her case. International media descended.
Through it all, Laura held on. She kept preparing. She upgraded to a larger boat — a twelve-meter ketch that would also be named Guppy — and worked with her father for months to restore and equip it. She obtained a first aid diploma. She studied sleep management techniques. She learned how to stitch her own wounds. She learned how to put out fires aboard a vessel alone.
On July 27, 2010, the court lifted the guardianship order. The presiding judge said: “With this decision, the responsibility for Laura lies with her parents. It is up to them to decide whether Laura can set off on her sail trip.”
Her parents said yes.
On August 21, 2010, fourteen-year-old Laura Dekker sailed out of Gibraltar alone aboard Guppy, heading south into the Atlantic.
What followed were 518 days that forged a child into something more.
She crossed the Atlantic. She navigated the Caribbean, transited the Panama Canal, and entered the Pacific — the largest, loneliest body of water on earth. She sailed through French Polynesia, where she was deeply moved by people who lived in harmony with nature. She threaded through the dangerous Torres Strait, navigating coral reefs and shipping lanes. She rounded the Cape of Good Hope off the South African coast in sixty-five-knot winds that could tear a sail apart or capsize a vessel.
When things broke, she fixed them herself. When sails ripped, she climbed up and replaced them in darkness. When storms raged, she held her course. When calms settled for days or weeks, she waited.
There were moments of crushing loneliness — weeks without seeing another human face. And there were moments of transcendent beauty. Sunrises that turned the entire sky into a canvas of colors she had never known existed. Dolphins that swam alongside Guppy for hours, as if escorting her. Nights when the stars were so thick and bright they seemed to swallow the darkness whole.
On January 21, 2012, Laura Dekker sailed Guppy into Simpson Bay, Sint Maarten. She was sixteen years and 123 days old. She had covered over 27,000 nautical miles. She had crossed every ocean. She had become the youngest person to sail solo around the world.
She didn’t cry at the finish. She didn’t give grand speeches. In later interviews, she said the moment felt strange — because the journey hadn’t been about the record. It had been about the freedom she’d been fighting for since she was thirteen years old.
“For me, that trip was really the beginning of my life,” Laura said years later. “Everything I have now has everything to do with that trip.”
After the voyage, Laura made a decision that shocked many: she renounced her Dutch citizenship. The government that had tried to take her from her parents, confiscated her boat, and sent her to foster care did not feel like home. New Zealand — the country where she was born, at sea, during her parents’ own circumnavigation — did. She became a New Zealand citizen.
She went on to become the youngest person to obtain a Yachtmaster Ocean Certificate. She wrote a book, One Girl, One Dream, published in four languages. She appeared on Dutch reality shows and won an expedition competition in extreme Arctic conditions. And she founded the Laura Dekker World Sailing Foundation — an organization dedicated to giving young people the chance to learn what the ocean taught her.
When asked what she would do if her own children came to her with an impossible dream, Laura’s answer was simple. She wouldn’t say it was unrealistic. She wouldn’t say it was too dangerous. She would say: “Okay, that’s great. What are the steps to achieve that? And can we do that together?”
Because Laura Dekker knows something that courts, psychologists, and child welfare authorities could not measure with any test. She knows that the people who change the world are never the ones who wait for permission.
They’re the ones who set sail anyway.
