Laura Dekker, on her boat Guppy

You might remember last month when we posted an article about Zac Sunderland, who had just become the youngest person ever to sail around the world alone.  Zac was 17, but he’s already been displaced by a younger 17-year-old, Mike Perham from Britain.  And Mike has a 15-year-old Australian girl on his heels.

But now there’s one more contender for the record on the horizon.  13-year-old Laura Dekker, who lives with her father in the Netherlands is prepping to make the year-long trip, too, with the full suport of her parents. 

However, she doesn’t have the full support of the Dutch government.  The Dutch Council for Child Protection is trying to get custody of Laura so that they can prevent her from attempting to reak this record.  They say she’s only doing it to please her father, who is also a good sailor, and that it is too dangerous for a girl that young to do on her own. 

Further, they say, this is an important year in an adolescent’s development.  She needs to be with adults and peers, not all on her own on a sailboat in the middle of nowhere for a year.  And authorities insist there’s no way a child that age can handle problems such as storms, mechanical failures, and pirates.  She might even be tracked and followed by people with less than benevolent intentions.

All that is true, though the same could be said for a 17-year-old guy, too.  I guess the question that interests me most is, who gets to decide?  If Laura’s custodial parent–her dad–is an otherwise good parent, does the government really have any say in this?  Is it really their decision? 

Maybe it is, if they feel the father is putting his daughter in danger by allowing her to try this.  The court seems to think so, because they granted the state temporary guardianship of Laura yesterday.  It’s a hard call. 

But it might become moot soon, anyway.  Laura is actually a citizen of New Zealand, having been born there (sort of–she was born on a sailboat in the middle of the ocean), so she might just pack up and move back to New Zealand to sidestep the interference of the Dutch government.

I have a 13-year-old daughter.  If she wanted to do something like this, I’d be incredibly proud…but I’d probably insist she wait until she was 16.  Even then… I wouldn’t want to be away from her for a year.