Posted by Peter Willis on August 01, 2010 at 05:40:39 user PeterWillis.
In Reply to: Re: Laura Dekker posted by ross cossar on July 31, 2010 at 04:12:22:
Peter Hitchens, writing in today's Mail on Sunday:
"A book for the voyage, Laura
Good luck to Laura Dekker, the 14-year-old Dutch girl who wants to sail round the world on her own. Laura was born on a yacht, had her own boat by the time she was six, and began sailing alone when she was ten. How I envy her. The last time I tried to sail alone, I was clinging to the wreckage within five minutes.
The efforts of the authorities to stop her were obviously motivated by reasonable concern. Imagine what the British state would have done. But children can do so much more than we think they can and grow with responsibility. Once, this attitude was common. Does anyone now read Arthur Ransome’s Swallows And Amazons, in which the children’s father is asked for his permission for the youngest to sail unsupervised, and replies in a telegram ‘If not duffers, won’t drown. Better drowned than duffers’.
In a later book, the wonderful We Didn’t Mean To Go To Sea, the same children unintentionally sail across the North Sea to Holland, when they accidentally slip anchor. They arrive safely, entirely because they have been trusted in the past. Someone should send Laura Dekker a copy."
I can't fault that. The key difference between Laura and the Swallows is that she seriously does mean to go to sea, and has already displayed immense capability, determination and confidence.
Check her blog for her description of tackling fishingnet around the prop in the North Sea shipping lanes.