Dutch teen sailor goes missing, found in the Caribbean

4:48 AM Mon 21 Dec 2009 GMT

'Laura Dekker photo by Valerie Kuypers' .

She wasn't at home, she wasn't on her beloved boat Guppy, and she had drawn around $5000 from a bank account.

14-year-old Laura Dekker, who hit mainstream world headlines when a Dutch court forbade her to sail solo round the world, was missing, but Dutch police didn't suspect foul play.

'We do not believe this is a crime,' Utrecht police spokesman Bernhard Jens told The Associated Press, and he was right, because Laura has now been found - in the Caribbean.

Laura, with the support of her father, sought to go solo sailing - not non-stop, as her now famous American and Australian sisters are doing - just cruising from port to port, as she had already done with her parents. She would, however, have become the youngest person to sail around the world alone, but her ambitions were stymied when the Utrecht District Court denied her the right in October this year. She was then put under the supervision of child care authorities until July 2010.

The young sailor was born on a yacht in New Zealand waters and retains dual Dutch and New Zealand citizenship. Laura said earlier this year that if Dutch authorities denied her right to sail she might return to New Zealand.

However, Dekker has now been found 'safe and sound' on the Dutch island of Sint Maarten, said the spokesman for the police in the central Dutch city of Utrecht, which is near the girl's hometown.

'She was recognised by an island resident who was aware of the media attention surrounding Laura's disapperance,' Mr Jens said. 'We still have a lot of questions: When did she leave the Netherlands? Why? How did she arrive in Sint Maarten? Was she helped and was she alone?'

Dekker will soon be sent back to the Netherlands, he said.

She lives with her father, who supports her sailing ambitions, in the Dutch town of Maurik, near Utrecht. Her parents are separated, and her mother is unsure about whether her daughter should go sailing or not. When Laura was 11, she sailed solo across the English Channel, when she was promptly placed in a children's home by British authorities. When her father came to claim his daughter he took her back to her small yacht, and she sailed home again.

In the meantime, 16-year-old Californian Abby Sunderland, with a lot of help from family and friends, is preparing her Open 40 yacht Wild Eyes in Marina del Rey in Los Angeles, and plans to set off this month for a solo non-stop and unassisted journey around the world.

She is is open competition with Australian Jessica Watson, just a few months older, who is already two months into her journey on a much slower boat, and who is also seeking to be the youngest non-stop unassisted circumnavigating sailor.

The informal competition to be the youngest person to sail solo round the world escaped from the sailing press and became main-stream world headlines earlier this year when Jessica hit a cargo ship and dismasted her boat on her first night at sea on her newly acquired yacht, Ella's Pink Lady.

All three girls have attracted much controversy about whether they should be permitted to sail or should be concentrating on school.

by Sail-World Cruising roundup

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